I recently discovered you can have special @mentions in Disqus comments while I was reading comments on some website. Here is a screenshot of an example I made with comments on my post:


I like this feature, though it might not be very helpful to me, because that's same reason why I only discovered this by accident almost one year later. I am sure some of you who have commented on Disqus system hadn't yet known about this feature.

The reason of being unknown to me is I reply to the comment with threading, the major feature I need. Since I directly reply to the comment, my comment will be placed below the comment with indentation. It is crystal clear that whom I am talking to. I don't even need to write down the commenter's name, I only need to refer to the person as you. Hence, I never knew about this and I had unsubscribed from Disqus' blog long ago until the comment with that @mentions I just read.

If Blogger's old flat commenting system had this feature, I probably wouldn't need to switch to Disqus. As I mentioned in previous post, threading is an important feature to me.

Although @mentions does not have much significances in threading system, but it's always to have a good feature like this. You may still need to refer to multiple previous commenter.

Another good add-on on this feature is the email alert, you will receive a notification when you get mentioned. This may be helpful when you forget to subscribe to the discussions (I am not entirely sure if there is an auto-subscription when you comment). You can turn if off in your profile settings:


I always like blogs or websites which use Disqus rather than the original or other third-party commenting systems. One reason is people can read all of my Disqus comments across websites in one place, although I don't like the designs of in-page pop profile frame or the profile page on Disqus. I often read someone's profile to see what they were talking. It is a good way to decide whether a commenter actually is a spammer or not.

The other reason is, again, the threading, that's default to all websites which uses Disqus and I love that very much.

I have thought about moving back to Blogger's commenting system many times, after all, Disqus is an external system. It may be gone one day, nothing last forever that I've learned over the years. If that's Blogger, then it really doesn't matter since your blog would be gone with Blogger. But if it's an external system, when their data is gone, your blog is still available but people will see holes, missing pieces like when your image hosting service has gone.

Disqus comments sync-back feature may help the issue a bit, but when threaded comments become flattened comments, they doesn't read as clear as before, confusion would be added among the comments.

However it seems that more and more impossible for me to do so. I am really stuck with Disqus, ain't I? But I am not complaining at all, I will keep using Disqus like a bajillian of years only if I can live that long.