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Discussion doesn’t take place in the comments

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I know it’s not news, but, since enabling comments and webmentions on my site, it’s become clear to me that – even on the indieweb – discussion doesn’t take place “below the line”, but on social media, whether that’s Twitter, Facebook or micro.blog

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Poorchop

I have come to find that you were 100% correct. Nobody out there is sending webmentions from their site to another. Website owners use webmentions to relay replies, likes, and reposts from social media sites. Nobody is going to leave a comment on a blog but if you syndicate a blog post to a site like Twitter, people are more likely to add their two cents exclusively through tweeting.

I guess the guys behind this technology have always acknowledged this truth.

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Leon

@poorchop,

It’s pretty rare. Partly because setting this stuff up is still a pain: I’m still not sure whether I’m sending webmentions properly, although I know I can receive them.

Still, if you forget the technology, I think there’s some life in the asynchronous online conversation yet: I do get the odd BTL comment, and I occasionally stumble across a post with lots of responses. I even get the occasional email. If someone replies on their own site there’s a decent chance you’ll find out, however indirectly.

Twitter dying a death may well breath some life into the comment. I don’t think people will simply replace it with, say, Mastodon.

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Webmentions

Comments and replies to this post from other sites and services, such as micro.blog and Mastodon.

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Poorchop

I went through a lot of effort to create a section of my site for sending mentions in order to say that 1.) I don’t see a comments section on your website and 2.) implementing a system just for sending mentions is incredibly cumbersome, which is why you might not see many. I have only done the bare minimum and I still have a long way to go.

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