Over these next couple weeks, I’m working on an early, usable version of Remark.as. I’ve been writingabout it a bit on my microblog, but wanted to share in a more interactive way, so I’m going to share my progress in this thread.
Would love to hear thoughts and first impressions on everything. So please feel free to share whatever comes to mind!
From today:
Not at all final, but here’s where Remark.as profiles (T883) are now. Each profile is associated with a Write.as blog, with data on top, so you can have an independent avatar and bio here.
Probably an unrelated question as to the main functionality of remark.as, but would this allow me to follow specific blogs without going through read.write.as?
But yeah I like what I’m seeing in that screenshot and am looking forward to see how it goes.
Looking good, @matt, I’d love to give readers the opportunity to comment on my blog posts. I’d be curious to know whether comments have to ‘sign in’ or be write.as members, or this will also be open to the public. In an ideal world, I think commenting-for-all would be great, whilst reducing the likelihood of spam (with a name/link they’d have to share, or an ‘i’m not a bot’ checkbox or something?). I’m sure you have your own well-thought out ideas around all this.
Nice work, and I’m looking forward to seeing this develop and go live
Yes, that’s exactly right. This is the “buddy list” feature (as it’s called now), where you’ll be able to follow the blogs you want – at first ones on Write.as, and eventually anywhere on the web.
Read.Write.as will also link directly to the Remark.as conversation for a post, if comments are enabled for that blog, so it all ties together.
Thanks, @jas! We’ll be rolling this out slowly, starting with a small group of people and gradually letting more in, so we can stay on top of potential bugs and evolve it around the community. So at launch, commenting will only be for Write.as users (Pro users, in particular). But comments will be publicly visible, so anyone can still read them without signing in.
You’re absolutely right that spam can be a problem, and I don’t have particular solutions for it yet, besides limiting who has access to the comment section. But the eventual goal is open access – we’ll just have to feel out our way there. I could imagine plenty of gradual approaches, e.g. your email subscribers can comment without signing in, or maybe there’s a secret link you can send to anyone who wants to comment.
I like the idea of commenting for Write.As members and subscribers, with comments available for all to read
It would mean I could end my posts with a “comment” call-to-action, rather than (just) saying “hit reply or email me”. I feel that blog comments can help nurture a sense of community and facilitate discussion/connetion, in addition to the 1:1 relationship between myself and each individual reader.
It hit me today, as I was looking at the Cafe: It would be nice if you could eventually have a private Cafe that worked as a sort of forum for all of your own blogs, but doesn’t list everyone else’s blog posts, especially considering the base Pro plan comes with three (non-shareable) blogs and the five-year plan ten. I have mixed feelings about the idea of people finding my content for the first time through a shared forum. Reddit and other forum-like websites have taught me that a disproportionate number of people never read beyond the title and this will become ever more of a problem as the use of Remark.as ramps up and it becomes more of a continuous stream of posts that are being interacted with.
I agree 100%. The Cafe should be at the very least an “opt-in” thing (like Read.write.as is). If people want to have a Public comment feed for a single post (or ALL posts), it could be an option (like a community discussion type of thing). But if I have comments on a handful of posts I’ve made, I don’t see why the Cafe needs to hear/see them (edit: went and looked and they are NOT on the Cafe, as the entirety of the blog is set to “Unlisted” - so that is good).
But in regards to a “Private” feed, I think that is already done with the personal remark.as URL for the user? Such as remark.as/tmo is where my posts live and has the comment link to the right of a particular post. And then all (expanded) comments are in the “Mail”. I think that’s how it is?
Anyway, Cafe is a cool thing for a public/forum-like dialogue if someone wants to go that route, but it should definitely be opt-in.
I still find Remark.as Cafe pretty slow to load up. I keep getting the “502 Bad Gateway” error. Don’t know why or what’s causing it. Any help is much appreciated.
FYI, this is kind of a showstopper for me. I’m considering moving to Wordpress.com because the commenting system is very friction-free. No login nor payment required to simply comment.
You’re right, Remark.as doesn’t currently allow unpaid users to comment. As a workaround and additional option for unpaid users, in the Write.as customization settings I added to my blog’s signature this code to let readers reply by email with subject Reply to blog post:
<!--comment--> | [Reply by email...](mailto:me@example.com?subject=Reply%20to%20blog%20post)
