Comment Frustrations!

As many of you already know, I have been experimenting with IntenseDebate as my comment form of choice. I found that there were things I really liked about it, such as the ability for commenters to reply directly to other commenters, starting a new thread with each comment. I also like the ability to rely to each comment without scrolling up and down the page over and over when you have several comments to reply to.

But I was also noticing some things I did not like about it. It appeared to be too "stand alone", if you will. For example, comments posted under IntenseDebate were not being picked up by my Top Commenters widget, nor were either of the two posts I made with I.D. being included in my Most Popular Posts widget, even though both posts had more comments than the current most popular post in my widget.

However, the final straw came when I read a post by Mar Matthias on The Matthias Chronicles. He was also "Giving IntenseDebate A Spin", and he discovered something about it that did not sit well with him, and after I read his post it did not sit well with me, either. Here is an excerpt from his post, " I found a detail through heavy investigation and research that just does not sit well at all. IntenseDebate does NOT pass URL link love. On this blog, that won't wash, I value my commenters to much to allow this... The way IntenseDebate works (I suspect Disqus, JS-Kit, SezWho, HaloScan and the rest work similarly) is as such, when a person leaves a link, IntenseDebate reroutes the link to its own server first, like a springboard. The ending result is when search engines come crawling by, they see IntenseDebate, not the URL of the commenter."

It seems to me that the negatives out-weigh the positives with I.D., so I decided to go back to Blogger's original comment form. I don't like it as much as some I've seen on other blogs I visit, but at least commenters will get credit for their links, if they leave one. There is one big problem with the switch back to my old comment form; I lost all the wonderful comments from my previous two posts. I'm just sick over it, but I am still trying to get them back. I hate the thought of permanently losing all of those great comments, but I guess I am just not savvy enough yet to know what I am doing (even when I think I do). Hard knocks, I guess. Anyway, if I do lose them permanently I sincerely apologize to all of you who took the time to comment on either, or both, of the posts.

If anyone has any suggestions of a good comment form that works well with Blogger I would appreciate the recommendation.