
Isso: A Commenting Server Similar to Disqus - vmorgulis
https://posativ.org/isso/
======
reitanqild
_SQLite backend

Because comments are not Big Data._

Yep, you got it.

Also MIT licensed.

Please go ahead and kill Facebook comments.

I strongly dislike realname policies in this day and time where a single
remark can cost you your job.

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anigbrowl
_Because comments are not Big Data._

I'd like to understand the significance of this. I'm _extremely_ interested in
comments as big data (to try to understand social networking patterns better
from studying the structure of nested comments) and I'd like to get a handle
on the opposite point of view - what is it that you prefer about this
approach?

~~~
reitanqild
> I'd like to understand the significance of this. I'm extremely interested in
> comments as big data (to try to understand social networking patterns better
> from studying the structure of nested comments) and I'd like to get a handle
> on the opposite point of view - what is it that you prefer about this
> approach?

While this might be interesting to _you_ it is in the best interest of the
site owners and commenters worldwide that not everything they write is
instantly correlatable to anyone who happens to work for Facebook or be in a
position where they can somehow buy or otherwise demand this data from them.

~~~
anigbrowl
You seem to have me confused with someone else.

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reitanqild
Care to explain?

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anigbrowl
I don't work for FB, nor am I in a position to demand big data flows from
someone else. I'm just intensely curious about the dynamics of commented
discussions and think it's an under-studied phenomenon. I'm not interested in
making money out of it, I just want to understand how ideas promulgate and
what factors drive virtual communities.

I was confused by the original post because a) I'm not sure why using SQLite
makes comments into 'not big data' (is it extraordinarily hard to get
statistical information out of SQLite or something?) and b) even if a blog or
website is completely private, might not the owner want to analyze what's
going on within the private social network they've created?

Also, I question your blanket assertion about what is or in't in the interest
of other people. You seem to have taken my prior comment as an intent to
exploit comment data for financial gain.

~~~
reitanqild
Aha.

Then you might get a license from me. And if you haven't tested with the HN
dataset that is where I would start.

 _I was confused by the original post because a) I 'm not sure why using
SQLite makes comments into 'not big data' (is it extraordinarily hard to get
statistical information out of SQLite or something?)_

No, getting data out of SQLite is easy. But I have yet to hear anyone using
SQLite for anything that would be called big data in a way that makes sense.
(Yes, my previous employers file share where we could upload 5GB files doesn't
qualify.)

I think the comment on the website is supposed to be funny in a bitter way.

 _and b) even if a blog or website is completely private, might not the owner
want to analyze what 's going on within the private social network they've
created?_

I have yet to manage to think of a private website that might contain enough
non-spam comments to qualify as big data.

And for small and medium size data plain SQLite is wonderful : )

What I and others are skeptical to is REAL big data, where certain companies
scoop up everything they can get their hands on. This is an often dirty,
potentially really harmful raw material as we have seen in articles about the
moderation teams that makes sure Facebook and others stays reasonably clean.

With a little bit of processing this "nuclear waste" is also possible to
weaponize. Two ideas off the top of my head:

\- Facebook and others can easily name thousands of people who waste their
employers time during the day.

\- or post a number of people who run pseudonymous accounts for various
reasons but have failed to maintain proper opsec.

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johnmaguire2013
I'm a big fan of Isso, and have been running it on my (not at all notable)
blog for a while! I do however wish that the commenter icons were customizable
(e.g. Gravatar, Facebook, etc.). There have been Github issues open for it
since 2014, but nobody seems willing to put in the effort to implement it. :)

~~~
LordWinstanley
Yeah. I'd like this too, but I'm not holding my breath as the developer comes
across as a bit of an arrogant arsehole.

When I first set up isso, I had a hell of a time getting it configured and
running, following the pretty poor official documentation. So I visited the
Github repo to ask for help but, after seeing the dev's condescending attitude
to other people in difficulties, I thought better of it and [fortunately]
managed to muddle through by myself.

~~~
posativ
Can you be more specific? I don't mind the accusation, but peope on the
internet™ have often different expectations of what a software should or
should not do. There is no such thing as the perfect product™. It is all about
tradeoffs.

~~~
lamontcg
In your FAQ page you appear to be more "opinionated" that Gravator should also
be considered harmful and does tracking, which cuts entirely against what you
see as the point of Isso.

So you tell them to go use Disqus if they need Gravator since they're
basically stating they don't care about anti-tracking.

You then also state that someone else should do the work of integrating with
Libravator.

It reads a bit gruff and asshole-ish.

On the other hand, TANSTAAFL and either someone should pay you or do the work
to do the Libravator integration, and it does seem very odd to pick up Isso
and then want to use an avatar service that also does tracking.

Presumably those people hate Disqus for other reasons, but it certainly
doesn't have to be your concern.

I'd probably write the same kind of tone in a FAQ entry as well, because if
its being given away for free then the flip side is that users on the internet
shouldn't be demanding assholes and want things for free that you have zero
interest in providing for free, and I think you make your position reasonably
clear.

 _shrug_.

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nodesocket
I've been scouring for a solid replacement for Disqus for my company's blog
([https://blog.elasticbyte.net](https://blog.elasticbyte.net)). We are
currently using Ghost and Disqus.

Isso looks nice, especially like the code blocks and backtick support.
However, social login is a must have. The ability for anybody to put a name
and email is bound to be a spammers delight.

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jaimex2
Genuine question which I think should be on the site's FAQ:

Why should I use Isso over Disqus?

~~~
LordWinstanley
Maybe if you don't want links in your comments surreptitiously hijacked by
Disqus and used to try and generate ad revenue:

[https://stiobhart.net/2017-02-21-disqusting/](https://stiobhart.net/2017-02-21-disqusting/)

~~~
mburns
That blog doesn't ring true.

They've had the program in place for years (~2012) and it is opt-in. Author
didn't seem to contact Disqus to see if this was a mistake or intentional, and
doesn't mention if the domain had the Revenue option enabled. He just says 'I
remember once clicking an unrelated option about showing inline ads, that
should have been good enough'.

Seems like a senseless ragequit.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
I doubt I enabled this and I just checked and my disqus comments also go
through this.

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jdsin
I explored this for my static website (hosted on github), Didn't fit my needs
exactly. So I started building one in flask and mySQL recently:
[https://github.com/singhjaideep/flask_comment](https://github.com/singhjaideep/flask_comment)

~~~
mikekchar
I'm curious about why you have a static website hosted by someone else, but
then host your own comments? Is there some advantage to keeping the comments
separated from the content?

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voltagex_
Static hosting is pretty much free, then the comments can go on a cheap
server.

I looked into using Discourse to do something like this, but they refuse to
reduce their memory usage (2GB minimum required, I think)

~~~
jdsin
Exactly! I host my blog for free on github, and the comments on free account
from www.pythonanywhere.com.

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cezedccsdezc
(about alternatives) "Juvia, written in Ruby (on Rails). No threaded comments,
nice administration webinterface, but... yeah... Ruby."

coming from a Python project...

~~~
jacmoe
Don't worry about Juvia. Project has been dead for years..

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reinhardt1053
Source code:
[https://github.com/posativ/isso](https://github.com/posativ/isso)

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guiomie
I'd like something similar (either a service like Disqus or self host like
Isso) but for reviews.

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StavrosK
I tried to set this up for my site, because Disqus takes two hours to load and
I don't like the centralization aspect and all the bloat they're adding.
However, I stumbled first thing on the "host" parameter. It doesn't seem to
like the subdomain I've set up for serving the comments, and it's obviously
not getting served on the top-level domain, so I don't know what it expects.

The documentation doesn't mention much there, so I'm afraid I'm stuck. Has
anyone managed to set this up? I'll open an issue with them to improve the
docs.

~~~
posativ
A host can also be a subdomain. I'm using Isso on my personal blog for
reference: [https://blog.posativ.org/](https://blog.posativ.org/). It works
exact the same way as for a top-level domain.

~~~
mitchtbaum
Worth mentioning for simplicity's sake, a "subdomain" is a domain, same for a
"top-level domain". The period marks simply add another level of terms to a
namespace on its left-hand side, usually in an already existing domain's
namespace. A domain can have any number of terms that someone wants; it only
needs a reachable nameserver, which ultimately the root-level operator
controls. To illustrate this, you used to be able to go to
[http://to/](http://to/) with the help of any up-to-date ICANN DNS record
keeper, but that record got deleted or something (though @to email would still
work, as shown in your terminal with `dig to` vs `dig mx to` or `dig any to`).

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pfsak
I use this for my static site. I like the lack of social login and gravatar,
personally. Requiring or preferring a web of networks just to leave a comment
is getting kind of crazy.

~~~
kaushalmodi
Can you please share your setup?

~~~
kaushalmodi
I was able to set it up successfully. Details --
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713507)

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SimeVidas
What about spam? Disqus has some sort of filter for that, right?

~~~
noqqe
Spam was (suprisingly) never a problem with Isso. Had it on my blog and after
>2 years and nearly 800 comments there was never a single spam comment.

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lazyant
"...most Python developers use the Python Package Index to get their
dependencies. ... easy_install is one tool to mess up your system. Another
package manager is pip." hmm TIL?

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adamante
My main issue with Disqus is not ideal indexing for SEO. Unfortunately for
what I have seen you guys didn't solve that problem :(

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kaushalmodi
So this wouldn't work with a static blog generated by something like Hugo,
right?

~~~
jordanlev
It certainly would... as long as you're hosting the comment backend somewhere
-- which might defeat the purpose of going with a static site generator in the
first place (if your purpose was to only host static files).

~~~
jdsin
This is exactly the issue I encountered. I run a pelican static blog on
github. I just host my comments as a simple flask app on
www.pythonanywhere.com Code here:
[https://github.com/singhjaideep/flask_comment](https://github.com/singhjaideep/flask_comment)

