The idea is never to touch the Disqus front-end and to use it purely as a synchronization service. Which is to say, no, there shouldn't be any impact on the DW front-end at all.

Which doesn't serve to solve the concerns with letting someone else's back-end touch your threads (no matter who's used as the controlling, 'canonical' version of those threads). I'd definitely be open to suggestions, and there is a reason I'm looking at Salmon, but at the moment I can't seem to come up with something that would be broadly workable that doesn't use some third-party service...