Caracas Chronicles

Quico says: As some of you know, I’ve had a long-running hate-hate relationship with Haloscan, the outfit that desiugned the comments software I’ve been using for the last five and a half years. Last night, in a bout of insomnia, I found out there’s are far more powerful commenting tools out there these days, so I switched.

My new provider is called Intense Debate. I’m all into it. Intense Debate is to Haloscan what a Porsche 911 is to a donkey cart.

The killer app here is comment rating, which allows you to have your say on which comments you find most valuable. In effect, this spreads the burden of moderating the comments section: rather than Juan Cristobal and I having to do it all, everybody – even lurkers – can help out with very little effort. It only takes a second to rate good comments Up and lousy ones Down. Over time, people who reliably contribute valuable comments accumulate reputation points, which are shown each time you post. You can even choose to sort posts from the highest to the lowest rated, which will make it easy to cut through to the best comments and give the trolls a miss.

Do let me know how it works on your machine. Initial reviews are somewhat dodgy. If too many of you hate it, I might consider switching to the other competitor in this race: Disqus.

Frankly, I’ve been so sick of Haloscan for so long, I’m just glad to have some choices here.