Ben Michael Ward is a Web Developer in San Francisco.

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How to keep track of comments

This has been bugging me for a few days now as a ‘hole’ in the way Blogging works right now. So, as a short “lunchtime thought”:

If people comment on my blog, I know about it. If people update their blog with new entries then I get notified via the Ping that bumps them up on my Blogroll. However, I’m short of a way of tracking where I comment.

Sure, I have a set of regular blogs that I read and check back on regularly, but what about some one-off contribution I make to a blog I may have forgotten all about by tomorrow?

I wonder if there is some space for some sort of ‘reverse pingback’ feature that sends a ping to the URI you specify as a commenter and would allow some kind of comment tracking feature to be built into my own Blog.

Or, alternatively (and more likely), is there something blindingly obvious that I’ve missed?

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3 Responses to “How to keep track of comments”

  1. Comment by Jo

    April 26th, 2005 at 12:20 pm

    What you’re talking about is a “subscribe to comments” feature. You check a little box when you make your comment, and future comments on that entry get e-mailed to you.

    There’s a plug-in for wordpress here.

    I couldn’t find anything for b2evolution I’m afraid, but there’s one for MovableType.

    Hope that helps :)

    Jo

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  2. Comment by Ben

    April 26th, 2005 at 11:36 pm

    “Subscribe to comments” features are nice, though the only blog I regular read with that feature installed is Colly’s.
    It’s something I’m keen to add to the next revision of my blog.

    I think I’ve confused the issue by mumbling about ‘reverse-pingback’, a feature which to be useful to anyone would require the entire internet to upgrade their blogs, rather than providing a fix for now.

    I have a feeling this is going to mean finding an RSS reader and remember to subscribe to things. It’s just a bit of a faff really, especially when moving around different computers on a daily basis.

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  3. Comment by Charl van Niekerk

    April 28th, 2005 at 12:02 pm

    I completely agree with you on this issue. An e-mail or separate feeds are just too much of a fuss. There should be a system that makes it much easier to track your comments from a central place. I don’t think current technologies will allow you to do that yourself – maybe a new kind of technology should be invented to make this easy and practical.

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