Named Commenting (GSoC 2010)

[onli]

The "Named Guest" comment level should give people from outside of dreamwidth the opportunity to comment on an entry without registering and without remaining completely anonymous. A Specification is already given.

Comparison

A comment on other Blogsystems like Wordpress typically stores following additional information besides the comment-text:

• Name
• Email
• URL
• (Whether to subscribe the entry)

The introduction on the "Summer of Code"-Wikipage speaks only about Name and URL, not about email. It was explained to me that email-addresses should not be stored so that nobody could spam another by entering a foreign email-address on comments to entries.

Necessary changes

Frontend

It's not strictly necessary to add one additional commentform. The current anonymous-commentform could be replaced with a new one having the additional fields, a comment without a chosen name would be a "old" anonymous comment.

Draft:

Note the use of "URL" in the list and "Website" on the label of the inputfield. Website is default on such forms, URL used in the OpenID-form. Which one is better suited? Instead of using Name/"URL/Website" in the list, it could also get called "Named comment".

Also note that "unverified identity" shall be appended to the pseudonym in the commentlist. The presentation of the comment itself aside from that won't differ from the comment of a logged-in commenter.

Database

At the properties associated with a comment, a place for the url has to be created.

Possible Extensions

Settings

A blogowner could get an option to require the commenter to use a pseudonym. This probably isn't a real extension, more a necessary option.
The other way around, to not allow anonymous user to use a pseudonym but to comment anonymously, is possible, but I don't see a usecase for that. Can you think of one?

Saving

It's possible to store in the cookies of a user his data, so he doesn't have to enter his name and url again, the commentform gets prefilled. The specification says it shouldn't be prefilled after a session or on other journals or on other entries. This could made controllable by adding a checkbox to the commentform asking whether or not to save the entered data (maybe instead of the session). It's also quite possible that it'd be useful if this storing of data wasn't per entry, but only per journal.

Email-related

Also storing email-addresses would allow to

1. Subscribe to an entry by just entering an email-address
2. Add suggested support for gravatar.

To prevent the use of this system for spamming, a double-opt-in-system for each subscription on entries could be used. The first email would ask if the owner of that address really wants to subscribe to the entry and only send notifications about follow-up-comments when answered "yes" (by clicking on a link).
Also a checkbox would be needed to activate the subscription in the first place.

Comments

[cesy]

For allowing unsigned but not allowing signed anonymous comments - there are various memes where you deliberately want no names at all, and it would prevent annoyance if it prefills by accident and you don't notice, thus ruining the game.

I am so glad someone is tackling this, though.

[onli]

Thanks, i'm so unfamiliar with memes, never would've thought about that usecase.