Test post for Mastodon Comments

16 Dec 2021 - Robert W. Gehl

I’ve been struggling with having comments on this Jekyll-based static site for a while. For a bit, I used Staticman, but that died for some reason.

Then, it hit me: so many sites use Facebook comments. Why can’t I use Mastodon, the FOSS alternative social media system, to do something similar?

Fortunately, this guide provided all the code I could need to do exactly that!

So this is a test run. Feel free to comment on it using your Mastodon account. (I think other federated accounts might work, but not sure – if so, let me know in the comments!)

If you don’t have a Mastodon account, don’t worry! You can sign up for an instance and join the federated fun.

UPDATE #1

I’ve tested it a bit and have found a few things that give me pause:

• It does not respect the distinction between Unlisted and Public privacy settings. Both will show up here.
• It does respect DM – that is, DMs do not show up as comments.
• It does not respect Content Warnings. This has been fixed; see Update #3.

With all that in mind, I think I may keep it (pending further testing) and include a warning in the “Comments” section.

UPDATE #2

Thanks to another Mastodoner, I found that if anyone who uses Mastodon to comment on a blog post deletes said comment, then it will also no longer appear on the blog. I think that’s a cool feature, but I’m thinking that I have be extremely clear about what happens when people comment on my blog. It’s going to be public – very public – not just in the federation, but also on my website.

However, I’m not 100% certain this is wise. I’d love to get more opinions from Mastodon users. Feel free to leave them in the comments – or, to be certain that your opinion is expressed privately, DM me (@robertwgehl@scholar.social).

UPDATE #3

Thanks to @ashwinvis, the comments system now supports Content Warnings. @ashwinvis wrote a few lines of Javascript that did the trick, resulting in CWs appearing with a small dropdown.

I love FOSS.

Post Tags

• Goal 1