

Isso – Open Source Alternative to Disqus - avinassh
http://posativ.org/isso/

======
infogulch
I noticed they use a Bloom Filter based on ip address to prevent people from
voting multiple times. According to the implementation[1] it uses a 256-byte
structure and limits the total number of votes on a post to 142 [2] (more than
that and the false-positive rate > 0.001). This is stored as a sqlite BLOB on
the same row as the comment.

But if you're limiting votes to ~142 anyways, you can just store the exact ip
address of every voter (packed in the BLOB at 4 bytes each) and it would only
reach up to double the space (~560). But since the _overwhelmingly vast
majority_ of comments won't get nearly that many votes, you'd actually be
saving space compared to keeping a bloom filter for each comment.

It seems like an overengineered and unnecessary technical complexity.

[1]:
[https://github.com/posativ/isso/blob/master/isso/utils/__ini...](https://github.com/posativ/isso/blob/master/isso/utils/__init__.py#L39)

[2]:
[https://github.com/posativ/isso/blob/master/isso/db/comments...](https://github.com/posativ/isso/blob/master/isso/db/comments.py#L186)

~~~
trurl42
I guess the point is to not store ip addresses.

Given the focus on allowing anonymous commenting [1] this seems to make sense.

[1]: [http://posativ.org/isso/docs/#what-s-wrong-with-
disqus](http://posativ.org/isso/docs/#what-s-wrong-with-disqus)

~~~
kevan
In that case you could store a hash of the IP instead.

~~~
infogulch
We're limited to ipv4 so even if you hash it you could still test every
possible address within a few minutes. You can even do the same with the bloom
filter, since there's at worst only a 1/1000 false positive rate (and likely
much smaller). The bloom filter isn't designed to provide security, and trying
to make (ipv4) IPs private if you're using them as identities is a lost cause.

------
pdx
I love the idea, but I don't love forcing non-technical users to learn
Markdown.

Hmmm, actually, it occurs to me that formatted comments are in general,
annoying and ugly, so perhaps hiding the fact that formatting is even possible
by not providing formatting buttons, is just fine.

~~~
alexcasalboni
Nobody likes Markdown. And even who does, can't really use it.

Here is an analysis worth reading:
[http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/15929/57347](http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/15929/57347)

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liotier
No mention of the word 'spam' anywhere on the site, apart from rate limiting.
To me, spam handling is pretty much the primary feature of a comments system.

------
cies
Thoughtbot is also working on something Discuss-like:

[https://github.com/thoughtbot/carnival](https://github.com/thoughtbot/carnival)

Made in Haskell, so it compiles to a binary for you deploying pleasure and
performance needs :)

------
avinassh
Link to GitHub -
[https://github.com/posativ/isso/](https://github.com/posativ/isso/)

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talles
Nice! I have a stupid blog generator
([https://github.com/tallesl/deadsimplelog](https://github.com/tallesl/deadsimplelog)),
might add support for it :)

P.S.: I may be completely wrong but... isn't that a Pokémon (on the logo)?
Being so, is possible that you guys would have copyright issues (right?).

~~~
bobfunk
Added your blog generator to StaticGen now :)

[http://www.staticgen.com/deadsimplelog](http://www.staticgen.com/deadsimplelog)

~~~
talles
I didn't know StaticGen...

Ty :)

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foolinaround
I can get that comments are not "big data" but SQlite seems underwhelming.

Any reason why this choice was made?

~~~
infogulch
Underwhelming? Do you have a case for this where SQLite wouldn't be good
enough?

~~~
jimstr
When having more than one web server (and no shared file system) ?

~~~
alexcasalboni
"SQLite is not designed to compete with Oracle. SQLite is designed to compete
with fopen()."

[http://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html](http://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html)

How about something towards the Cloud direction, like AWS RDS? MySQL, Oracle,
SQL Server, PostgreSQL or Aurora might work better.

------
jtwebman
If you are going to run your own comment system why not embed them in the
HTML? At least then the search engines could index them. Does it have this
option?

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Yadi
This is pretty awesome!

Is there a way to change the SQLite backend?

------
dfischer
New comments should go on top not bottom

~~~
aw3c2
I'd like that to be a configurable option.

