A quick message to everyone who uses Haloscan comments (which would be me, and a lot of your blogs, and everybody who comments here). You may not have noticed, but Haloscan commenting is about to change, big time, within the next few weeks. Steel yourself.
Haloscan's been my comment system of choice since 2002. Blogger didn't have commenting functionality back then, so early adopters had to make do with adding third party pop-ups. I liked Haloscan's simplicity, plus the fact commenters didn't need to log in or anything complicated. The system was fairly resilient, if not always perfect. Haloscan still has an annoying habit of pretending that comments more than 4 months old don't exist, even though they're all still there if you click on comments (0). Try contacting Haloscan's owners for a response, especially in more recent years, and you met with a wall of deafening silence. But, overall, their service is straight forward and it works and I'm happy with that. Maybe not for much longer.
Back in January, Haloscan "partnered" with up-and-coming web business JS-Kit. That partnership lasted until July, when JS-Kit suddenly acquired the lot. They snapped up the entire user-base, back comments and all, and promised a bright new more stable future. I wasn't entirely comforted when I read sentences like "JS-Kit empowers publishers by delivering must-have features, promoting rich interactivity and building community and customer knowledge" but so far I've had no worries. Until I read this.
"We are making it dead simple for you to upgrade your comment service to JS-Kit Comments and keep all your old comments! When we're done, HaloScan users will have a brand new data center that will be much faster and more reliable than the old HaloScan systems. HaloScan users will also get 12 engineers writing new features and improving the user experience."
It was all sounding so good until those last four words.
What will change after I upgrade? • All new comment threads will use the new JS-Kit comment system (hmm) • All your existing Haloscan Comments will progressively convert to JS-Kit Comments over the next few months (eek) • JS-Kit has different templates, including a "Haloscan Classic" which looks like the current HaloScan skin. (ahh) • You will start moderating your comments from the JS-Kit Administrator Dashboard (ulp) • No more loss of comment data after 4 months (hurrah) • Free for everyone under 25,000 impressions per month (fingers crossed) • New complimentary widgets such as ratings, polls, navigator, and more to come (tremble)
The word "threads" has me worried, because I hate the complexity of threaded comments. Hopefully that's a switch-off-able function. The conversion of past comments has me nervous, because not every comment written with the old system in mind will look right in a new skin. And there are rumblings about changes to comment moderation features (i.e. editing and deleting comments) that have me unnerved. I might be less concerned if I could see precisely what the future might look like, but so far I've failed to locate a single existing website that's already using JS-Kit pop-up commenting. Instead I have to make do with an example of in-page commenting, kindly offered by JS-Kit for reassurance purposes, which has actually worried me more than anything else they've said.
And then there's this.
"Users who choose not to upgrade right away will be auto-upgraded over the next couple of months. We will be upgrading remaining users in batches. Each batch will be notified via email before a migration occurs. The default settings will be applied to your new JS-Kit Comment."
So it's happening whether we like it or not, and it's happening soon. Better get used to the idea, then. I know I'm change averse, and I don't like change for change's sake. I know that the new systemmight turn out to be a lot more resilient and responsive. I'm reassured that JS-Kit appear to be going out of their way to provide detailed upgrade information, in advance. I'm sure owner Khris will tell me not to worry. But I remain concerned that the new system might be a bit too clever, too fiddly, too 2.0, when all I really want is a simple way for commenters to write text in a box. Be prepared, the interactive future is on its way, and it's unstoppable.
