Disqus vs IntenseDebate

The keen-eyed among you, especially anyone leaving comments here, will have noticed over the past fortnight that the site comments have switched from Disqus to IntenseDebate before today switching back to Disqus again. The standard default WordPress in-built comments have appeared whenever neither of the other commenting systems have been running. So. Why?

A number of other bloggers have in the past written on the merits or otherwise of installing external commenting systems, and the pluses and minuses of Disqus and IntenseDebate. I’ve concluded both have serious failings but are more or less equal these days in terms of functionality and aesthetics.  All you can do if interested is try one for a week, try the other for a week, see what feels right for your blog and makes most sense to you in how it’s set up.

Any comments people leave while you’re test-driving are synched back into your WordPress database (and your old comments are imported into both Disqus and IntenseDebate), so you shouldn’t lose or corrupt any data at all by hopping around like this. Both systems perform well in my experience when it comes to import and export and maintaining a central integrity to your core WordPress comments.

I first tried IntenseDebate a long time ago and then switched to Disqus, which I stuck with a very long time and only got annoyed with and removed when it took over a week of waiting for an answer to my support message in the forums (along with, it seems, many more people judging by all the unanswered questions I spotted) and my email to the help address. I got auto-notifications from the help email address but nobody human ever contacted me as a consequence. That’s a very poor show.

If I hadn’t been a Twitter user posting messages about my frustration that contained the hashtag #disqus, which were spotted by a Disqus employee and then the CEO, I’d have had no responses at all. Eventually the CEO told me that the 403 error people were getting when posting comments here was a fault on my server, not theirs. He was truly apologetic for nobody having said this long before, but I was still none the wiser as to how I might solve the problem and only Disqus was giving me 403 grief. So I got rid of it and reported the issue with my webhost. My webhost, helpful as ever (is poor technical support to be found from every Internet company?), eventually replied with an email the tone of which suggested I was dim, having checked things out and finding no reason for the 403 error. But now it’s gone. Trust me, the 403 error was no figment of mine or my readers’ imaginations.

I decided to give IntenseDebate another try. Like Disqus, IntenseDebate provides space, like Disqus, for users to post if they’ve got problems and seems, unlike Disqus, to actually have some people bothering to reply. It’s just a shame that, of the problems I noted with that system, the solutions provided didn’t work. The IntenseDebate recent comments widget didn’t update; it showed comments posted the last time it was installed, even though it successfully imported all comments made since. A friend tried using the Facebook Connect functionality, and that didn’t work either; its implementation was clunky, and a bit nasty. No new comments appeared in the IntenseDebate dashboard; there was more spam showing up on the site; and, unlike Disqus, the IntenseDebate admin interface had to be brought up via a new browser window instead of being integrated with the WordPress admin—too much hassle, way too many clicks, far too much faffing around.

The decider for me, though, in the face of equally unimpressive technical support from both systems, was the fact that Disqus is far less confusing to the end user in how it presents information.

IntenseDebate displays stuff that provokes a WTF? response from most site visitors, like, what’s all the 51p or 30p stuff about? To us Brits it looks like commentators have inadvertently found themselves up for slave auction being sold for extraordinarily small change prices. In reality, it’s supposed to be a way of rewarding frequent commentators with nothing worthwhile as far as I can make out. Like gold stars in school. They’re gold, they’re pretty, but they don’t unlock treasures or open doors. The points system is disastrously unclear and confusing, doesn’t suggest any one commentator has more authority than another, and I wouldn’t want that anyway. We’re all equal here.

The problem with both systems right now is that the support on offer is patchy at best, often confusing and, worst of all, sometimes just not there. They’ve got to a point now where they’ve resolved most issues with import and export, integrated Twitter and Facebook (the latter still needing some refinement, more with IntenseDebate than Disqus), and continue to improve. But I’d argue that the key factor both need to work on is the improvement of end user support. This could ultimately be the decider between two otherwise more or less equal systems.

We expect automated replies from help email addresses, but these should be followed up within 24 hours with real people getting back to us, showing just how much they want to help and not assuming that we’ll understand the finer technical details or have direct easy access to our server configurations. Webhosts are often notoriously unhelpful as well, so tell us, if there’s a server-side problem suspected as causing a problem, exactly what we need to tell the people hosting our websites to look for. That’s a good start. And don’t expect everyone to want their questions to appear in forums. It’s helpful to others, yes, but then only if visitors to those forums see questions with answers alongside. No answers, you’re creating a seriously bad impression.

I’ve returned to Disqus but there’s no brand loyalty at play here. With all things Web 2.0, people are fussy and fickle. A much-loved plugin, for example, will be ditched without tears if something better comes along or a rushed update causes grief. For now, Disqus—with the 403 error mysteriously resolving itself—is my choice because it offers a less confusing interface to people wanting to leave comments, and better integration for me behind the scenes with WordPress (ironic, as the folks behind WordPress now own IntenseDebate). But the lamentably irritating support experience remains with me, and is not easily or readily forgotten. If Disqus learns from grievances like mine it can build brand loyalty.

I like Disqus, definitely more than I like IntenseDebate, and so I really do hope the support side of things improves quickly.

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