
Isso – a commenting server similar to Disqus - lobo_tuerto
https://github.com/posativ/isso
======
ploggingdev
The topic of Disqus alternatives comes up every once in a while on HN, so I
was thinking about inviting the people working on Disqus alternatives to my
chat room and have a conversation about their projects and the comments space
in general and write a lightly edited blog post based on the chat. Here are
some of the people I plan to talk to:

* `foxhop of [https://www.remarkbox.com/](https://www.remarkbox.com/)

* `adtac of [https://github.com/adtac/commento](https://github.com/adtac/commento)

* `KajMagnus of [https://www.effectivediscussions.org/](https://www.effectivediscussions.org/)

* The person behind Isso

* The person behind [https://github.com/schn4ck/schnack](https://github.com/schn4ck/schnack)

* Aja of Civil Comments (it shut down recently [https://medium.com/@aja_15265/saying-goodbye-to-civil-commen...](https://medium.com/@aja_15265/saying-goodbye-to-civil-comments-41859d3a2b1d) )

* And of course, my own [https://www.hostedcomments.com/](https://www.hostedcomments.com/)

We actually had the first discussion in the chat room (though we went off
topic very quickly), you can read it here
[https://www.hackerschat.net/topics/general/chat/archive/?dat...](https://www.hackerschat.net/topics/general/chat/archive/?date=2018-01-07)

There are a few opinions people have about this space, some feel going ad-
supported is the only way, others feel bootstrapped operations are sustainable
and there are others who feel there's no money in this space. If you have any
questions that you would like me to ask the people mentioned above let me know
here or in my chat room
[https://www.hackerschat.net/](https://www.hackerschat.net/)

~~~
brightball
Do any of these options provide a way to import existing site comments from
Disqus? That's my main hesitation with replacement because I don't want to
lose previously good discussions.

~~~
r3bl
Have you checked the submitted URL of the thread? Because:

> Disqus & WordPress Import

> You can migrate your Disqus/WordPress comments without any hassle.

~~~
brightball
Somehow...I didn’t see that. Thanks.

------
chrissnell
I've run a few large vBulletin forums for years. The biggest problem with
internet commenting isn't the software, it's the spam. I wish I had a system
that I could train with 10 years of user registration and comment moderation
history and have it do the tedious, daily pointy-clicky grind for me.

~~~
Harelin
The forum spam problem is easily solved if you ask a question during
registration like: "What are the last four letters in the name of this
website?" Anything that requires momentary thought from an actual user, and is
specific to your website, will throw bots off.

~~~
nodja
This only mitigates spam if your forum is small enough for spammers to not
care. Those questions are a mere extra parameter on the registration post
request. Spam software automatically detects those and asks a human to fill
it. If the question is static it's even easier than a captcha solver.

~~~
ryacko
Spam is done by massive botnets that crawl the web at a rate nearly equal to
Google's.

~~~
AFNobody
And they have their equivalents of Amazon's Mechanical TURK to learn how to
bypass security questions.

[https://2captcha.com/public_statistics](https://2captcha.com/public_statistics)
<\- this for example

You can find humans willing to work for $0.001/captcha.

~~~
littlestymaar
I've also read that some torrent or other illegal download website display
captchas that are in fact captchas from other websites, to crowdsource the
captcha bypass.

~~~
AFNobody
Correct. There is a long list of human farming options they employ.

They frequently use that one then "pretend" they have workers.

------
darekkay
I've been searching for a Disqus alternative for a while, and Isso is one of
the first project I cape upon. However, I had some problems getting it to run
and it did not fully convince me. Recently I wrote a blog post[0] summerizing
different options to offer comments on my static site. But in the end I
dicided to keep Disqus, but only load the script on a "load comments" button
click.

[0] [https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-
comments/](https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/)

~~~
thekashifmalik
Yay! Glad you stayed. We'd be sad to lose you :(

If Disqus built an optional/configurable load-comments-button feature into the
product, would you use it?

~~~
darekkay
Great to see a response from Disqus here :)

The big problem most people have with Disqus are privacy and performance
issues [0][1]. Of course, a fully free service at this scale often comes at
such a price.

Hacking a load-comments-button myself was really easy, but I'm sure many more
people would use it if you provided it out of the box.

[0] - [https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-
comme...](https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comments-on-
my-blog-heres-why)

[1] - [http://donw.io/post/github-comments/](http://donw.io/post/github-
comments/)

------
NiceGuy_Ty
> SQLite backend > Because comments are not Big Data.

For small scale applications, I 100% agree. Sqlite3 is so easy to back up and
configure.

~~~
jteppinette
> If there are many client programs sending SQL to the same database over a
> network, then use a client/server database engine instead of SQLite.

[https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html](https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html)

~~~
lioeters
Judging from a quick glance, this particular library (Isso) does not seem to
be the case of "many client programs sending SQL to the same database over a
network". There is only one server as a "client" program, sending SQL directly
to the database, not over a network. If so, I'd tend to agree that SQLite is
suitable for its purpose.

------
ryannevius
I'm just curious, since it wasn't touched upon in the README or the landing
page: what's wrong with Disqus? Alternatively: what problem are these Disqus
alternatives trying to solve that Disqus doesn't?

As someone who has added Disqus to many projects, I'm genuinely not sure what
added value I'd see by using an alternative.

~~~
detaro
9$ a month to turn off ads. Various other things like (supposedly
accidentally) injecting affiliate links
([http://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/switching-away-from-
disqus...](http://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/switching-away-from-disqus-
review-increased-comments-by-304/)). Control about your comment data in case
they pull yet another one of these things and you want out. Not wanting to
expose your users to yet another tracking company.

------
xez
Somehow it seems like none of these so-called Disqus alternatives cover the
use case of people with static websites that don't wan't or can't host the
comments themselves.

------
raister
Yet Another Commenting Server - how many of those do we really need?

