Proposal: flexible blog commenting for all - 8 comments

The Wardman Wire has a post about the relationship between blog aggregators (i.e. things like B4L) - or 'portals', if you will - and their constituent blogs, and asks whether or not those aggregators should (or indeed could) accept comments on behalf of those constituent blogs.

Perhaps I just haven't looked widely enough, but this seems to be yet another opportunity for some keen web developer to fill a yawning gap in the market and make life easier for a lot of people.

It seems to me that if you've taken the time to post a blog entry, and accept comments on your own blog, albeit with certain limitations (e.g. no anonymous commenters, or only approved people who appear in your WordPress database), you should be fairly comfortable with the idea that a Bloggers4Labour reader who reads your post might be able to (again, assuming they meet the same criteria) comment, without even having to click through to your blog. Plausible? Well, perhaps this is somebody who prefers to receive round-up emails, or use a feed reader application - they might not even Bloggers4Labour's site.

So, you'd be happy with wider access in theory, but what wouldn't be of any use to you is if Bloggers4Labour kept all those comments itself, causing you to have to check (and monitor) two sets of threads, rather than one. Unfortunately that would seem to be the only likely solution at present. I now refer you to the first comment I left at The Wardman Wire:

The vast majority of blogs use the comment facilities that come with their blogging package: if more could be persuaded to use external services then there’d be the opportunity for B4L (and perhaps other savvy aggregators) to accept comments for a syndicated post and push them onto the same queue/list that the source blog uses, which would seem to be the ideal: maximum exposure for comments, and without duplication.

I haven't come across any external commenting service that does allow this. Here's my next comment:

I guess if Google opened up comment feeds for the vast number of Blogger blogs, a service akin FeedBurner could wrap the vast majority of blog comment feeds up; they’d then only need to allow other (authenticated) people (e.g. those who run aggregators) to publish to them, and you’d have the kind of ideal system I mentioned earlier.

Nice little online business opportunity for someone there! Sadly I don’t have the time any more.

Just to clarify how this might work:

1. Google reveals how all Blogger uses can publish an authenticated comment feed URL.
2. 17-year-old web developer simultaneously launches new external comments service ('acmeComment.com'), having been inspired by this post, naturally.
3. Keen B4L blogger signs up with said service, entering his Google or Blogger account and password. A 'wrapped' comment feed becomes available within seconds. ('acmeComment.com/keenType/comments?type=rss'). All new comments on his existing blog will likewise appear there.
   
4. Keen blogger then grants B4L (itself) the right to display the relevant 'Comment' button/link.
5. B4L publishes that link for each article it syndicates. Though Blogger users might need to log in (depending on the Keen Type's requirements), B4L readers will be able to publish comments to the shared comments feed URL, that Keen Type will be able to track in any feed reader, or at: 'acmeComment.com/keenType/'

The procedure would be pretty similar for WordPress, etc. bloggers, who would instead have to submit their database login, and user table details, etc.

I'm not going to write any such system myself, but what level of enthusiasm is there for such a thing?

Presumably if the answer is "any", then it's only a matter of time before it appears (I notice that Google has just bought FeedBurner, for what it's worth), and perhaps if this post has inspired you, you'll buy me a drink with your first million of advertising revenue.