Site Commenting Update

First off, I want to thank everyone for their apparently infinite patience as I try to debug the site since it went live just under a week ago. I appreciate everyone’s understanding and the helpful hands I’ve been getting from all across the globe.

You are the real heroes here.

The part giving me no end of grief has to do with comment moderation. Some people seem to be given no problems at all when they pass the first approved moderation hurdle. Others… well they need to be moderated for each comment. The only sure-fire workaround is to make everyone sign up to be a user on the site, which has it’s own disadvantages, as I don’t want to force people to do that if they’d really rather not.

At first, I blamed Jetpack. And it does contribute to the wonk. But then, out of desperation, I deactivated all of the plugins for the site to see if there was a conflict. And the forced moderation persisted on the base WordPress code, even when my fake account was logged in. My core theme shouldn’t be the issue, as it is the one they recommend for debugging sites (although its tweaked, it is only only on block levels).

After reloading the WordPress install from ground up (!) to make sure there are no missing files and running naked the site, the problem persisted. So I reactivated the plugins that made sense to continue to use and opted for going to the more feature-rich commenting system, as it will allow me to add some basic protections that Jetpack doesn’t have against bad actors (because the moderation element is considered core WordPress, it isn’t available as a toggle for Jetpack and no one wants CAPTCHA).

I think (think!) that migrating back to this more feature-rich commenting system should get rid of some of the problems I’m experiencing, although it may create other issues in the process that hopefully Akismet will prevent from spiraling out of control.

Good grief, but I’m tired of squashing bugs instead of writing…

Unfortunately, one of the side-effects of using a different commenting system is that visitors will be required to step outside of the WordPress.com/Jetpack App ecosphere if they want to comment and do much more than like a post. As ugly as it may be, that information will go into my RSS feed footer as well (what Jetpack apps uses to fill your Reader, with some integration).

Over time, I hope to make it so that you can log in to those comments using your WordPress, Instagram, Facebook, Google/Gmail accounts, as well a handful of others. Right now, there is only WordPress and Google logins, but that’s because it takes time to get authorization keys for each login. As long as you have cookies enabled for your browser, you should be able to just pop in afterwards. If you prefer to reject or block cookies, you can use these alternative accounts to log in to comment. BTW: I hash and anonymize cookies that the site uses when I have control of such things and plan to put up “Reject all cookies” and “Do Not Track” features in the future after I develop my privacy statements.

I apologize for all the hassles and for making it more difficult to be a subscriber. Again, I thank you for you patience. If a fix comes up that lightens the burden on you, I will deploy it as soon as I am able.

I’ll also put of a FAQ page for how to make following conversations on this site easier, with plenty of opportunities to opt-in/opt-out of those subscriptions.

Thanks again. I really appreciate everyone’s persistence in spite of my frustrations.