text: // Layouts
  import Post from '../../layouts/essay'
  
  // Components
  import P from '../../components/paragraph'
  import Meta from '../../components/meta'
  import Link from '../../components/link'
  import { H2 } from '../../components/heading'
  import { Ref, FootNotes, Note } from '../../components/footnotes'
  import Quote from '../../components/quote'
  import HR from '../../components/hr'
  
  export default () => (
    <Post>
      <Meta id="turning-off-comments" />
  
      <P>
        Since I started this blog using Jekyll, I knew this
        day would come. And yeah, here it is! Because this
        is a static site, there{`'`}s no way to implement a neat
        commenting system without doing many things
        client-side. Since I thought allowing people to share
        their knowledge on my site was a good
        thing, I{`'`}ve embedded Disqus - a really convenient
        way to manage comments.
      </P>
  
      <P>
        But over time, I noticed a few things that bugged me
        on this constellation and I never felt really happy
        about the solution I put up for this problem. Thus
        there{`'`}s now time for a change:
      </P>
  
      <P>
        It{`'`}s not just about the time I{`'`}ve spend with
        moderating all those comments (that{`'`}s probably
        what you were thinking of, when you first saw
        the headline). Currently, I don{`'`}t need to use much
        of my time for this. But when looking at some other
        edges of this topic, you{`'`}ll quickly notice that
        removing comments from my site is way better than keeping them.
      </P>
  
      <H2>Your Time Is Valued</H2>
  
      <P>
        Right now, there{`'`}s so much stuff happening on the web. And
        I know that I{`'`}m definitely not the only person
        you{`'`}re drawing attention to, which is why I don{`'`}t want
        to artificially encourage you to spent more time
        on a specific text if you actually want to move on
        and read the next one (or even leave my site).
      </P>
  
      <P>
        After finishing an article, you shouldn{`'`}t be distracted
        with the decision wether to continue scrolling down and
        reading all of those comments or to just leave the page or
        read another article. I want to give people the chance
        to keep up with all the ideas and tips that I{`'`}m putting
        up here to make their work easier and more fun.
      </P>
  
      <P>... Instead of wasting their time for no reason.</P>
  
      <H2>The Faster, the Better</H2>
  
      <P>
        Let{`'`}s face it: Disqus is a performance-disaster. I only
        need a simple list of comments including a text
        field which allows people to easily add their own
        opinion. But that{`'`}s not what I got and also not what
        I will ever get if I keep using this service.
      </P>
  
      <P>
        I don{`'`}t exactly know why they don{`'`}t care that much about
        speed, but maybe it has something to do with their own
        expectations: Maybe they just want to provide a
        convenient way for visitors to leave a comment. But if
        you ask me, loading ca. <b>
          21 uncached scripts, icon-fonts, images
          and stylesheets
        </b> (which all together make around
        253KB) + building a websocket-connection is just too much<Ref id="1" />.
      </P>
  
      <P>
        Although they{`'`}re loading so much stuff for just one
        tool, they didn{`'`}t even manage to have the commenting input
        resized when the user switches to landscape-mode on mobile devices.
      </P>
  
      <P>
        Especially as a defender of the open and
        fast web, I simply can{`'`}t affort this amount of
        garbage on my site. If I speak or write about
        something, I want to be able to account for it.
      </P>
  
      <H2>How Disqus Makes Money</H2>
  
      <P>
        When I first started using the service, I kept searching
        for something like a
        {' '}
        {`"`}
        premium
        {`"`}
        {' '}
        or
        {' '}
        {`"`}
        pro
        {`"`}
        {' '}
        package, because I wanted
        to hide this damn branding at the bottom of the
        iframe (which itself is another argument for removing the system).
      </P>
  
      <P>
        But sadly, I didn{`'`}t find one. Now, a few months
        later, I found out that Disqus did so once, but basically
        doesn{`'`}t do it like this anyway. They{`'`}re now providing a
        VIP service targeted at very large sites like Fox, IGN, etc. - but do
        you really think this could pay all the
        stuff they need to run it? No.
      </P>
  
      <P>
        I trust them when they say the following in
        their <Link href="http://bit.ly/2jcFuwV">Privacy Policy</Link>:
      </P>
  
      <Quote>
        We will not rent or sell your Personally Identifiable
        Information to third parties outside Disqus and its controlled
        subsidiaries and affiliates without your consent...
      </Quote>
  
      <P>
        But that doesn{`'`}t mean they won{`'`}t use the tracking data
        within their own company to generate targeted ads and
        show them on your site, if you integrate their service. And
        I figured out that this is something that I
        can{`'`}t allow on my site anymore.
      </P>
  
      <P>
        And while we{`'`}re on it: Yes, I use Google Analytics to
        monitor my site and find out which pages take too much
        time to load (and also on which device and browser). But I
        will probably also remove this service from my site in
        the future, as soon as I find out about another app
        which does the same while agreeing to not use the
        visitors data for creating targeted ads.
      </P>
  
      <P>
        I also contacted GitHub a while ago and asked them to
        implement a tiny analytics tool for GitHub pages within
        the already existing tool for tracking visitors which
        you get on repos (let{`'`}s hope they will soon spin
        this something like this up).
      </P>
  
      <H2>How Does the Future Look Like?</H2>
  
      <P>
        Firstly, I usually post my articles
        on <Link href="https://news.ycombinator.com/">Hacker News</Link>, as
        well as on
        {' '}
        <Link href="https://www.designernews.co/">Designer News</Link>
        {' '}
        (and
        if I don{`'`}t do it, you{`'`}re of course free to do so). If
        you don{`'`}t know them already: They{`'`}re platforms which you
        can also use to add your own thoughts on a specific post
        of mine (e.g. on this one). Of course, you can also
        just write me on Twitter or via e-mail.
      </P>
  
      <P>
        Using this method, I also make sure that people are not
        confronted with the question if they should post their
        comment on the platform which led them to the article or
        on my site. I{`'`}m really looking forward to the release of
        Apple{`'`}s {`"`}News{`"`} app, maybe they will already provide
        a more convenient solution for this. And while we{`'`}re on
        it: If you already downloaded the beta of iOS 9, try
        searching for {`"`}Leo{`"`} within the News app 😅 - and let
        me know if you found me (I{`'`}m unfortunately not yet
        able to register for Apple{`'`}s new developer program
        to get the beta by myself, at least their site tells me this).
      </P>
  
      <P>
        Another great way to make room for your opinion is to simply
        quote the article on your own site and then let me know
        about it over social networks. If I encounter a great
        comment, I will make sure to publish it
        here (including my own statement).
      </P>
  
      <HR />
  
      <P>
        One of the great people who inspired me to do this is John
        Gruber from Daring Fireball. He also had a few of the thoughts
        I wrote about above and
        already
        {' '}
        <Link href="http://shawnblanc.net/2007/07/why-daring-fireball-is-comment-free/">
          disabled
        </Link>
        {' '}
        them
        many years ago.
      </P>
  
      <P>
        I hope you{`'`}re not that disappointed about the fact that you
        wont be able to leave comments directly on my site anymore, but
        this is a step I definitely need to make. I also still value
        your opinion, only the way how you can interact with me changed, nothing else.
      </P>
  
      <FootNotes>
        <Note id="1">
          I know that many of them are only loaded after
          the site itself has finished loading completely, but for
          me, the difference that this fact actually makes, is fairly small.
        </Note>
      </FootNotes>
    </Post>
  )
  