Intense Debate and Disqus
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As an experiment, inspired by a comment to this blog today, I have disabled the IntenseDebate commenting system here and am going back to comments within the framework of RadicalAtheist.

This is a change I’ve wanted to try for some time. I’m not totally comfortable with having comments hosted by another service, away from the blog itself.

I don’t have any issues with the IntenseDebate service itself. It does what it claims and it does present a pleasant interface. I’ll be doing this same thing with DISQUS over at heathenqueer.com Both are worthy of consideration by blogs encumbered with hundreds of replies to deal with. They offer statistics and controls that many built-in commenting systems don’t.

I don’t suffer that burden. To me, sending the comments off-site is an impersonal way for me to treat those who do bother to leave a comment. I enjoy reading the comments left here. I know I need to reply more often, to encourage the conversation. For me the comments are personal. When I write I’m expressing honest opinions and beliefs (or lack of same). When people respond to my writing, they are responding to me, to my thoughts, to what makes me me to a large extent.

So let’s see how well this works. I’m eager to hear your opinions.

(Cross-posted to heathenqueer.com)
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