# Commenting powered by Discourse

DevFeed: [Commenting powered by Discourse](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/commenting-powered-by-discourse-41332.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://samsaffron.com/archive/2013/12/04/commenting-powered-by-discourse>)

Author: Sam Saffron

Published: 2013-12-04T03:12:48Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Sam Saffron](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/sam-saffron.md>)

Topics: [web applications](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web-applications.md>), [Software](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software.md>), [Markdown](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/markdown.md>), [notifications](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/notifications.md>), [email](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/email.md>), [Crawler](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/crawler.md>)

Tags: [blog](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog.md>), [email](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/email.md>), [markdown](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/markdown.md>), [notifications](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/notifications.md>), [robots-txt](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/robots-txt.md>), [spam](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/spam.md>)

## AI overview

The author explains why Discourse powers comments on the blog. Although using it adds friction because readers must log in on another site, the author values its support for thoughtful discussions, email follow-up, Markdown editing, moderation, and spam prevention. The author reports receiving no spam over the previous 55 days.

## Source excerpt

Leaving comments on this blog requires a certain amount of commitment. You have to jump to another site to log in. ac12507b13e4685b.png765x428 13.4 KB Compare this to the "least amount of friction possible". A lot of work. When I made the move to Discourse I thought of this state-of-affairs as a temporary situation. I would add the "traditional" comment box at the bottom and make it super easy to add comments, I would transparently create accounts and all that jazz. A couple of months in, I am not so sure. When I think about comments on my blog these are my priorities. Give users room to type in interesting and insightful comments. Provide great support for followup (reply by email, email notifications) Rich markdown editor with edit and preview support. Comment format must be markdown, anything else and I am risking complex conversion later on. Zero spam Comments / emails / content are unconditionally hosted on my server and under my control. Not hosted by some third party under their rules with their advertising injected and my readers tracked. Trivial for me to moderate. You may notice that, "Make it super easy for anybody on the Internet to contribute a random unfiltered opinion" is surprisingly missing from this list. What does Discourse score in my 7 point dream list? A solid 7 out of 7. The extra friction completely eradicated spam and enables me to have rich conversations with my readers. I have their emails, I can communicate with them. ###About Spam twitter.com Kelly Sommers @kellabyte Trying out disqus cuz I just got 600 more spam comments on my blog since earlier. Gotta end this madness. 12:19 AM - 1 Dec 2013 1 I eliminated the vast majority of spam on this blog a while back. I blogged about it 2 years ago. Critics claimed that this approach was doomed to fail if it ever got popular. Discourse is popular. Yet I get zero spam. By zero I mean that in the last 55 days I got no spam on this blog, nor did I have to delete any spam from this blog. http://discu