In-page venue discussion/comments

[popey]

One feature of the original NDT site was discussions/comments on venues. This enabled people to share their experiences of a venue, provide a light-touch method for visitors to discuss the venue itself, and quickly offer corrections.

As the site itself is static (on purpose), there are slightly limited options for enabling discussion within a page.

Despite its popularity, I'd rather not use something like disqus because of the user tracking, heavy JavaScript-heavy UI, and potential data silo that could disappear at any time.

Another (more preferable) option would be gitcus that leverages this GitHub Discussion system for storing, moderating, and rendering the conversations, and integrates with Hugo. I have it enabled on my blog, although I don't get many comments, but you can see the ones that do exist here in the repo for my blog.

The main disadvantage of giscus is that we're a) expecting people to sign up to GitHub for the simplest of lightweight comments/replies, b) we're siloing our data in GitHub, which isn't much different than putting it in Disqus.

The final option I have only considered in the shower, and not at depth, is implementing a bespoke discussion system, which feels like a can of spam worms that could be an entire project in itself. The very idea of making a robust, responsive, secure, GDPR-compliant comment system gives me the shivers.

WDYT?

[edent]

I think it would be useful. If only to have comments like "closed on Tuesdays" or "wheelchair accessible" or similar.

Given that it is nerdy, I think GitHub is a reasonable ask. Comments as PRs means the GDPR stuff is in the hands of GitHub. Similarly, the Online Safety Act requirements would be lowered.

Regarding self-hosting. I have comments on OpenBenches using https://commentics.com/

It is a PHP script and database, so I can self-host. I don't allow people to add their email address or website, so no GDPR worries. I also pre-moderate any comments to avoid OSA issues.

[popey]

Ok, I created this work in progress PR, which enables giscus.

So you'll see this under posts, which needs some style work.

This results in new topics being automagically created here in the Venues category. If you have the All Discussions view open, you'll see them in the Venues category.

However, this results in a rather ugly and unnecessarily long topic.

So I switched it to pathname, which looks like this:

The problem being if we use Title or <title>, there's the possibility of a non-unique category, which would mean discussions/comments may appear under the wrong venue.

Hmmmm

[popey]

Looking a little better.

[darkling]

I think you'll need a risk assessment and associated documentation under the OSA. (In fact, I'm not sure that one isn't necessary anyway).

[popey]

Yeah, working on the OSA page anyway. You're right.