Hi everyone! I wanted to know what people thought of WriteFreely and Plume and which one you would recommend for a personal blog. Also, if you can, could you suggest some instances? From looking, I often come across instances with strangely little on their about page, and can’t work out who administrates them. Thanks!
People can subscribe to my WriteFreely articles on Mastodon and can comment to their heart’s content. And since I too subscribe to them, I can see the comments. I just don’t see the need to host them myself on my blog.
I meant to say that allowing comments is a selling point or promotional aspect because it keeps users engaged and give them a reason to come back. They have a reason to revisit the blog, see new posts, and comment on old posts. Having run a message board for over 20 years, I’ve observed that when people visit without posting something back, the quicker traffic dries up to almost nothing.
With WriteFreely (and presumably Plume) people can follow via ActivityPub and comment on platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy, and other such locations. On top of that Mastodon, for example, can be used to spread the link bringing new eyes to the blog, as well as permitting comments to be spread around even outside the usual circles of the blog’s readers.
I really don’t see what hosting comments directly brings to the table.
Yes I know. But you can also just post a link on Mastodon to the blog (via an RSS bot for example). If there are no federated comments, it is functionally identical.
Why disable when you can use something that doesn’t have them in the first place? It would be like buying a car that periodically sends electric shocks to the hands on the steering wheel, but which you can disable. Why would I buy the car in the first place when I can get one that doesn’t periodically send shocks to my hands ever.
Because that’s the one where they don’t include the steering wheel at all. Or the engine block. The shocks and the other parts are inextricably linked.
A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”. It is a common, informal name for a federation of social network servers whose main purpose is microblogging, the sharing of short, public messages.
There are those who think not having comments is a selling point. ;)
It is. Without user interaction, it’s very difficult to get readers to come back and read subsequent articles.
I’m not sure I follow.
People can subscribe to my WriteFreely articles on Mastodon and can comment to their heart’s content. And since I too subscribe to them, I can see the comments. I just don’t see the need to host them myself on my blog.
I meant to say that allowing comments is a selling point or promotional aspect because it keeps users engaged and give them a reason to come back. They have a reason to revisit the blog, see new posts, and comment on old posts. Having run a message board for over 20 years, I’ve observed that when people visit without posting something back, the quicker traffic dries up to almost nothing.
With WriteFreely (and presumably Plume) people can follow via ActivityPub and comment on platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy, and other such locations. On top of that Mastodon, for example, can be used to spread the link bringing new eyes to the blog, as well as permitting comments to be spread around even outside the usual circles of the blog’s readers.
I really don’t see what hosting comments directly brings to the table.
Why not just use RSS then?
I’m not sure how RSS helps in publishing a blog?
Any blogging platform supports RSS. So you can subscribe to them just fine.
What federation brings to the table is the back-channel, i.e. comments. If you don’t want that, you don’t want federation IMHO.
You can federate just fine. I’ve followed and boosted WriteFreely articles on Mastodon.
Yes I know. But you can also just post a link on Mastodon to the blog (via an RSS bot for example). If there are no federated comments, it is functionally identical.
(Just to mention it:) writefreely only publishes articles via Activitypub but does not have a way to view replies on an article (yet?).
Yes, exactly. Personally, I think Plume does it the right way here.
Could they not simply disable them?
Why disable when you can use something that doesn’t have them in the first place? It would be like buying a car that periodically sends electric shocks to the hands on the steering wheel, but which you can disable. Why would I buy the car in the first place when I can get one that doesn’t periodically send shocks to my hands ever.
Because that’s the one where they don’t include the steering wheel at all. Or the engine block. The shocks and the other parts are inextricably linked.