Disqus Feature Request: A Chance To Monetise?
I’ve just installed Disqus, a neat blog comment management system on this site, joining over 4000 blogs.
Disqus is a blog comment management system that effectively turns comments on a blog into a community.
I like Disqus because the profile page provided for each commenter at Disqus.com adds an additional level of accountability to each comment, something I think surpasses its ‘threaded comments’ feature which is what initially attracted me to it.
However, as fantastic as it is, Disqus lacks something I really need:
Comment Voting
I’d really like the ability to vote for individual comments within Disqus.
In effect, I’d like to be able to turns comments on certain posts on this blog into competition entries.
This is quite different from allocating reputation points using the Clout Points system already in place on Disqus. This works across the entire Disqus ‘network of blogs’ and would not be an appropriate way to handling voting for individual comments on a particular blog.
Disqus Comment Voting – How It Would Work
- Competition entrants enter by leaving a comment on a blog post using Disqus.
- Each comment now has a prominent Vote button associated with it.
- Entrants vote for their favourite comment.
- Each commenter is only allowed ONE vote.
- At the end of the competition, the number of votes received by each comment is revealed!
The competition moderator (most likely the author of the blog) is the only person able to see the total number of votes entered for each comment until after a set time (most likely the end of the competition) when it is displayed on the blog.
Here are three mockup images illustrating what I mean:
Voting For Comments in Disqus – Before Vote is Cast
Click to view larger image – Before Vote is Cast
Voting For Comments in Disqus – After Vote is Cast
Click to view larger image – After Vote is Cast
Voting For Comments in Disqus – At The End of The Competition
Click to view larger image – Competition End
Why I Want Comment Voting in Disqus
Regular readers of Real Fresh TV know that our popular re-launch giveaway competition, the first British iPhone giveaway was marred by voter malpractice.
For this particular giveaway, comment voting was provided via Comment Karma, the popular WordPress plugin.
The Problem:
The problem was that people repeatedly voted down entries as they were made. This happened because the voting mechanism in Comment Karma allows either positive or negative votes for each entry.
At one point, pretty much every comment had ‘negative’ points next to it!
To fix this, I had to modify Comment Karma to only allow positive voting, delaying the deadline of the competition several times in the process.
Having said that, the iPhone Giveaway was incredibly popular and I intend to run similar 5 Day Giveaways in coming weeks.
Comment voting via a blog comment management system is something I would consider paying for… DisqusPro anyone?
At the very least, adding it to the free version could make Disqus the defacto commenting plugin within the blogosphere, in my opinion.
The truth is, I could really use comment voting in Disqus because I’m working with a client who needs such a feature. And I’m happy to offer up the Real Fresh TV site as a willing guinea pig.
I have spent a bit of time brainstorming the conditions required in the code and a variety of special cases and would be happy to share those…
Anyone else want something like this?
Disqus, in the comments…
Comment Vote buttons courtesy of MyCoolButton.com
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