MY CHOICE TO GO THIRD-PARTY
My motive for using a third-party commenting system on the new redesign was purely experimental. I was satisfied with the built-in WordPress comments, however I was getting a ton of questions about third-party commenting systems and there was no way for me to give an honest answer and share my experience because – well – I had none.
So…what better way to know what it’s like than to try it out myself.
Benefits
There are a number of strong cases for using a third-party commenting system.
Firstly, because someone has to login and authenticate before they can leave a comment, the likelihood of spam comments, and beyond that, the likelihood of troll-like comments are far less, since they typically like to leave comments anonymously or using a fake name and/or email address.
Since switching over to Disqus, the spam comments have nearly all but disappeared. I’m very happy with this.
Secondly, it’s a little bit easier for commenters to go back and track all of their previous comments. There are ways to do this using the WordPress commenting system, but there are more options for comment subscribing using a third-party service like this. People are more able to customize their commenting experience on the site.
Thirdly, comments are able to be shared via social media, which helps promote the post. To be honest, I don’t see this feature being used very often, even though it’s there. Only a couple of times I’ve been inclined to share an actual comment from a blog post – but again, that option is there just in case.
Fourthly (and this one is my favorite), the quality of the comments has increased – by far. Besides the spam and troll comments that are virtually non-existent, the comments from my audience are – for a lack of a better word – better. In general, they are more thought-provoking, and also longer too.
There are other features that I like which Disqus and other third-party commenting platforms make easy to enable, however they can also be implemented on a WordPress commenting system with plugins, such as replies and threaded comments, and voting up good comments. The ability to sort through the “best comments” (i.e. the highest voted) and newest and eldest is very handy.