Hey, Where Did Comments Go?

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Back in 2018, I replaced the native WordPress comment functionality with Facebook’s blog comment tool to eliminate anonymous comments and control spam. It worked great until last summer during the national election, when Facebook began making massive changes to their API in response to pressure over their lack of control over disinformation.

Since then, the feature has been in steady decline and as of last week, I decided to jettison the function entirely. As of now, I’m exploring solutions that will allow comments to get up and running again while maintaining the following quality control standards:

  • Disallowing anonymous comments.
  • Comments can only be submitted by individuals with verified accounts at Google and/or Amazon.
  • Comment meta is not owned by a third-party provider.

The upside is none of this impacts the ability to engage across social media and the reality is there’s far more conversation happening on Facebook walls, Twitter, and LinkedIn than here via blog comments.

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

View all posts by Drew McManus | Website

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