Last night, I conducted a small experiment: I switched the internal Movable Type commenting system for Disqus.
For background: leaving feedback on my blog, I’ve been told repeatedly, has been too difficult and too cumbersome, and so my rate of feedback has plummeted greatly. This has been caused by a chain of inconveniences:
- Years ago, I became fed up with blog spam and wished to have no part of it, and shut off anonymous comments. This is a huge wall for people wishing to leave feedback.
- Movable Type’s login methods are largely grounded in a Javascript wrapper that can be finicky.
- The types of authentication supported – LiveJournal, TypeKey, OpenID – are not nearly as popular as, say, Facebook or Twitter.