[unescape]

Read the top-level comment from hello_there:

In an ideal comment system I believe that articles, comments and moderation events should come from three different, decentralized streams (like Atom) that the end user can subscribe to individually and that are joined at the end users client.

What he is asking for is the exact opposite of "the added legitimacy of the site itself". He's asking for a user interface to integrate content that does not come from the site itself.

That would be a lot cooler than another comment moderation system, of which there are already multiple open-source implementations. Could someone at least provide an argument of why Mozilla Talk is better than the existing solutions?

[s73ver_]

If that's what you want, then again, you have multiple sources for that. Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon, your own blog, etc.

[unescape]

What's still needed is a set of tools to

1. Aggregate comments from Mastodon, personal blogs, etc.

2. Interact with these comments by upvoting and applying filters, etc (i.e. moderate)

3. Publish your moderation actions and apply the same type of metadata from other moderators (and moderation aggregators).

If Talk has any value, it's to serve as a starting point for Tool 2.