Thanks for taking the time to check it out, I will look into what I can do to improve those issues. It’s basically impossible to get usability insights like this when you’re the only person working on something, so this is much appreciated, thank you!
You can share a link here if you would like. ConfabUI is written in Svelte though, so I’m not sure how nice it would be to integrate with React.
I’ll use this comment to address some questions I’m getting on the demo:
Why not a wysiwyg rich text editor? Markdown is for nerds like us. Comments are for all.
Simple reason is that a plaintext markdown editor was easier to implement. I decided plaintext was “good enough” for the kind of site Confab is intended for. If there is enough demand for this, I’d be happy to look into implementing a better editor in the future. Edit: The current editor has graphical icons for all the rich text features which automatically inserts markdown snippets, so even a user who doesn’t know markdown shouldn’t have too much trouble using it.
I did consider this, but I thought the email requirement would generally be enough to discourage spam, without adding too much of a hurdle to the commenting process.
I think if I get around to implementing anonymous commenting, I could certainly add an option for captcha. I’ll keep that in mind, thanks for the suggestion.
I will put that on my to-do list, thanks for the suggestion.
Admin(s) will be notified by email every time a new comment is posted, unless this feature is disabled.
As for an RSS feed, I’m not sure how this would work since Confab supports comments at multiple locations within a site… I don’t have much experience with RSS, but I’d be happy to look into it further if you would really like this feature.
That’s a fair question, I guess the requirement for an email just adds a roadblock for potential spammers. Plus admins have the option of disabling new sign ups temporarily, so anyone that has logged in previously can keep interacting if a website is under attack.
The idea for an email domain blacklist/whitelist is a good idea though, I’ll add it to my todo list.
Thanks!
The reason for breaking to the next line on mobile was definitely horizontal space constraints. The anonymous usernames can get a bit long, and there also needs to be space next to the username for badges.
And I’m fairly sure I later added “Posted” for the mobile layout to make use of the extra space that moving to the next line allowed for.
Fair enough, that’s another vote for anonymous commenting. Thanks for taking the time to check out the demo.
I do appreciate the feedback though, and I agree that it’s not really anonymous if you have to enter your email. I have removed that word from the login panel title.
Emails are used for user authentication. I’ve talked about mandatory authentication in the design philosophy section of the docs. TL:DR, it’s to prevent spam, and I’ve made every effort to make the authentication process as friction-less as possible.
I do currently have anonymous commenting on my Trello board so that hopefully in the future admins can have the option of enabling this if they wish.
For the demo, by all means feel free to use a throwaway or temporary email.
Why is that? If you have any specific issues, please let me know.
Like promotional emails? Not at all.
I’ve added features that allow admins to prevent their instances being used for spam. These are explained in the abuse mitigation section of the docs.
Rate limits can be set for authentication emails to minimise spam. The only other type of emails sent to users are reply notifications (when someone else replies to their comments). This is enabled for each user by default (if admin has enabled this feature on a per-location basis and globally), and can be disabled by users on the main panel.