[mattcrest]

We haven't enabled comments on our blog precisely for this reason.

Are there any success stories or best practices for quality comments and discussions on blogs? What makes Hacker News commentary successful? User accounts required and therefore no anonymity? Guidelines?

[gr366]

I wonder about using something like Facebook Connect for commenter accounts, and using the person's full name that Facebook provides. People might be less likely to post useless or trolling comments if their real name (indexable by search engines) and even a link to their Facebook profile were attached to their comment.

[_delirium]

They might be less likely to post lots of other stuff too, though. Do you really want any potential future casual acquaintance, boss, or what have you, to have instant, easy access to a transcript of every conversation you've had?

[CamperBob]

This would also rule out people like myself, for better or for worse, who refuse to use Facebook.

[_delirium]

The biggest determining factor in my experience has been whether something has a community around it or not. Newspaper comment sections and YouTube video comments don't have a community--- they're drive-by comments by whoever shows up. Smaller forums, mailing lists, and IRC channels where everyone knows everyone else are sort of the best-case. As it scales up, it gets harder to keep quality high.

[allenbrunson]

the reason comments are good here is because the moderators are serious as a heart attack. you don't get to make many jerk-like comments before your account gets banned.

[marciovm123]

the other reason is that this community started out as extremely self-selected - people who got through a pg essay or applied to yc, and appreciated the quality that was here already w/o being turned off by the sparse visuals. As more people have joined, that quality is getting diluted, but there's a long way down before it reaches current reddit levels.

[awa]

I think creating a link to a community site like HN or reddit at the end of the post so people can submit/comment on the community site rather than on the blog might help.