Don't know about you, but we got pretty attached to the Captcha commenting system. What started out as merely a utilitarian tool to make you prove that you weren't some bot trying to sell us UGG boots actually kind of grew on us.
But now, Captcha–otherwise known as the Wavy Band Name Generator (“Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Crowbar Crateast!!!!”)–is going away. The Weekly's blogs are switching to Disqus to make commenting, interacting with our writers and other readers, and community building on the blogs much easier.
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Disqus is the same system used on many Tumblr blogs, as well as
CNN.com, TechCrunch, FoxNews.com and more. We've decided to make the
switch because Disqus offers some very cool features, including:
Instant gratification
Comments go live as soon as you hit send, which means bantering back
and forth about a blog post will be more like an online chat and less
like waiting for your comment to be approved by an archaic spam filter.
Disqus also lets you comment via your smartphone.
Threaded conversations and gold stars
No more confusion over who you're responding to. In addition to
commenting on a post, you can comment on other readers' comments,
inline. You'll also be able to share your clever statements on
Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, and “like” comments of
others.
Get comments via e-mail
You can subscribe to comments on any blog post and also be notified
when someone replies to your comments, instantly, via e-mail. You might
never get any real work done again.
Commenter profiles
Be as anonymous or as open as you want to be. Disqus allows you to
create a profile for yourself, or log in through Facebook or other
sites you already use. Profiles also allow you be a part of various
Disqus communities.
So give the new system a try and let us know what you think. As always, we look forward to hearing from you in . . . the comments!
