While KTVZ has provided commenting features on their new stories for quite a while, the Bulletin only started allowing them recently, and only to subscribers. (KOHD allows comments on their site, too, but KOHD just doesn’t have the up-to-date and depth of content online that KTVZ and The Bulletin have, so there is very little discussion.) The Bulletin has now opened up commenting to non-subscribers as well. KTVZ’s comment system is powered by JS-Kit/Echo and it appears the Bulletin’s is powered by Disqus. Both sites allow you to use your Facebook, Twitter or Yahoo! accounts (among others) to sign in, but you still need to either register somewhere to post on the Bulletin’s site (you can post anonymous, but moderated, comments on KTVZ’s site, which doesn’t appear to be an option on The Bulletin’s site).
I don’t know the relative benefits or advantages of either commenting platform (there is a lot of discussion here), but it’s good to see the options for discussion in the community (since I’ve long shuttered Bend Forums).
Comments
FYI, we’ll be switching by May to a new Website platform (co.-wide), and will probably move to the great Disqus comment system. Whether it will help me deal better with abuse of anonymity not sure yet, but Disqus has some great features, such as allowing folks to sort comments by newest/oldest first, top-rated, etc.
Does that mean you’ll be losing permalinks to previous stories? New platforms generally mean new link structure, so I’d look into that.
At bendbulletin.com, we’ve decided to open commenting because we want to encourage community dialogue, but we also want to prevent abuse. Allowing anonymous commenting makes abuse more likely, so we chose this route that Disqus offers. I think it is not overly burdensome for commenters, and will help keep discussion civil.