In last week’s poll we asked you whether you will rush out to buy the new iPad 3. The poll included 5 options, and surprisingly enough, the 416 votes were divided almost equally between these five options. But which option was the most popular one?
Out of 416 readers who voted, 17% want the iPad 3 but already own an older tablet, another 17% think tablets are useless altogether, 18.5% will definitely rush out to get the iPad 3, 21% plan on buying it but not right away, and the most popular option was chosen by 26.5% of the voters, who are sticking with their current tablet for now.
Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.
So in general, MakeUseOf readers seem to not have a sweeping opinion of the iPad 3. The small majority, however, are sticking to their current tablets. Could this be due to the fact that no one really knows for sure what the iPad 3 will be all about? I’m definitely waiting to see if it’s actually all that special. We’ll find out in just a couple of days!
This week’s poll question is: Do You Support MakeUseOf Switching Its Comment Interface From Disqus To WordPress?
This week’s poll is a bit different than usual. Instead of asking for your opinion on software or hardware, we’re looking for our readers’ opinion regarding MakeUseOf’s own commenting system. MakeUseOf has been using Disqus for comments for quite a long time. Disqus is a very powerful and popular platform with lots of great features, but it does have a few technical downsides. As a result, we are considering switching our commenting platform to WordPress’s built-in one. Since comments are our best way of communicating with you, our loyal readers, we want to hear your opinion about such a switch. The more answers we get, the better we know what you want, so don’t hesitate to vote!
If you voted for option 3, which platform would you rather see us use? Is there a reason you like or dislike Disqus as a commenting platform? We’d love to hear all your thoughts in the comments.
Hide 38 Comments
Never like these over-reaching global “social” services. They are too invasive.
So you’d like to see us to drop Disqus? I mean, I’m assuming you’re referring to Disqus in your comment.
It would be great if you could explain the technical downside.. I use Disqus on my blog and have been quite satisfied with it.
Same here, I like Disqus since so many websites use it. I login once and it works everywhere.
Performance issues when syncing comments to our local server; additional page load time; inability to customize comment system and integrate further with our other site features…
For most sites, I dont think these are relevant issues. It’s a great system for regular blogs, I think.
Out of curiosity, what kind of customizations? Disqus tends to cache while, so I’ve never really noticed any major issues. WordPress comments means you’ll be putting more stress on your database server.
We have a lot of caching here, so native commenting wont be a significant performance hit. The problem for us is when disqus syncs to our local db, its effectively the same as having it local anyway, so we gain nothing there. Disqus tends to hit the servers with a ton of comments in one go, rather than one by one as would be the case with native WP commenting.
As for customization, I’m talking about integrating comment system further with our game mechanics – voting comments up – that kind of thing.
I like Disqus just fine.
Why are you switching? What will be the differences from an end user perspective?
You can see James’s comment above where he describes the problems we’re having with Disqus. As for how it will affect you, you will probably have to sign in separately to MakeUseOf’s comment system in order to comment, it won’t be a huge global thing like Disqus.
Maybe James can elaborate on that.
Why do you want to change?
I personally do not like commenting on this blog as I feel that most comments amount to nothing more than a shout out, i.e. it would be nice if the authors took the time to reply.
We try our best to answer comments but we get a lot of comments on a daily basis, plus our comment notification system on Disqus often doesn’t work (hence the reason why we are considering switching).
But you can rest assured that all comments are read. We even have a dedicated comments editor (Tina Sieber) who ensures that the correct post writer is notified of any questions or complaints that need to be urgently addressed.
Hey car,
Just wanted to chime in and say that Disqus is one of the reasons this happens, as Mark said. Since we get so many comments, the lack of an efficient comment-alert system results in us missing comments all the time.
Hopefully if we switch, this won’t happen anymore. Most authors are happy to answers lots of comments, I know I am. :)
Thanks Mark and Yaara
Guess that address both my question and observation :-)
Have you tried using the Disqus dashboard?
To follow up on comments, you mean? It doesn’t help much, unfortunately, since it only notifies you about replies, and not about general comments to your article.
This is one of the many technical downsides… poor spam filtering.
Yep, exactly.
The best thing about disqus is that you don’t have to create more a login for each website.
Yes, I agree. This is why I was wondering in the poll if not using Disqus will result in people commenting less. How do you think it will affect you?
Bear in mind you can also login to MUO using any of your social network credentials. You needn’t create a separate login.
That sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t I don’t think its a MUO specific problem however. It seems to be typical of a certain type of request when I use google chrome.
Cannot understand why Disquis doesn’t work for you. I like Disquis so no I do not like the idea. But then its better for you I guess I would go with it. Disquis is used by a lot of sites thou.
James explained above the difficulties we’re having with it. I think the main problem for authors is missing comment alerts, and thus not being able to answer all the readers’ comments.
It is nice that Disqus is everywhere, I agree with that. I hope you will continue to comment nevertheless!
What I’ve seen in disqus’s commenting system is that it loads everything in its dialog box whether I want it or not. It should load a tab only when I want.
If WordPress’s commenting system is going to be light weight then I’ll surely go with you.
Why I said this because my net connection is slow.
That’s a good reason. Disqus is quite bulky to load when there are lots of comments on an article.
Try using Livefyre. Or the default one is also good.
Thanks! I will pass this on to our developer.
Would we actually have to sign up to use WordPress? I mean, you can just leave it so people can fill in their name, email, website and leave a comment. When you combine it with Akismet and Growbot Anti Spam Plugin you get no spam on smaller websites and very little on larger ones.
That will probably be the case initially. But, personally, I would prefer to remove anonymous comments entirely. Many other sites do the same, and the level of quality of discussions when users need a persistent identity rises significantly.
From a user standpoint, I don’t really care. If I have to create an additional login to comment, then so be it. It is about 3 minutes at most of my time and then I will probably be agnostic to the comment system
That’s good to know, thanks!
Disqus is my favorite commenting system.
What do you like about it? I also think there are many good sides to it.
On the commentor side, Disqus is fine. I haven’t had a user problem with it, and actually signed up for its service in order to comment on this site.
It’s good to know it hasn’t been giving the users any trouble. We to have you sign up to a different service if we switch. :)
Common! The like system on disqus was nice. Also it kept me logged in all sites and blogs using Disqus. I did not have to enter my name and email id everytime. I could use any of my facebook or google or other accounts. Why did you have to switch?
Whatever it chooses, I will always love MakeUseOf!
David P. Smith
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