Introducing 💬 Comments!

118 writers, artists, and photographers published 428 quality essays, insights, and guides on this blog. I’m beyond grateful to be in such a company.

Thank you all who contributed to this project along the way and those of you who advised me to add comments to this website. Which is the topic of this post.

You are right, it’s a basic feature. And you shall have it.

I’ve been resisting the comment section for five years, relying on email, IRL, and social media to connect with the human world of photography. I did this because I didn’t trust myself enough to be a moderator and I don’t like the creepy, generic, slow plugins. But good people and the current broken state of social media have convinced me to do the obvious thing.

Help me build a diverse and welcoming community on Analog.Cafe.

I’m building the commenting tool from scratch — so that we can engineer and fine-tune an ideal platform together.

Please have a look at the rules and features below, and please let me know what you think in the comments. 👋

👉 Authors: If you don’t want comments on your article(s) — please email me!

Features.

Comment sections now appear below all new articles (unless the author requests them not to be there). Comment sections can also be locked upon request.

A new (3/‘23) dedicated comment stream page now lists all active conversations on the website, Twitter-style.

You can edit your comments. They’ll be marked as “edited.” I won’t store the history of edits — only the last revision.

There’s a ❤ button next to each comment. If it’s your comment, you’ll see the last five people who ❤’d it. A good way to respond to someone without having to type up a new comment.

Anyone whose article(s) have ever been published on Analog.Cafe can publish comments freely. Same with people whose comments I’ve approved previously. Everyone else will have their first comment reviewed before being allowed to post. I’m hoping this will facilitate greater freedom of expression while also keeping this space clean and friendly.

There’s a limit of 1200 characters per comment (with a minimum of 3 characters). Comments are mostly text-only entries, but I’m working on maybe making image posts availabile for all, there are link highlights, and the comment sections will respect line breaks: feel free to write in paragraphs.

As you type, your text will be “beautified” slightly. That is, straight quotes and apostrophes will become “curly,” short-dashes with spaces around will become long — em dashes, and three dots will be converted to a single character: ellipsis…

You will be able to subscribe to comment threads — but the work on that feature is still ongoing. 🚧

Data privacy. The comments hosted here will store only the necessary bits, like the comment itself, user ID, and article ID. I do not plan to create “shopping profiles” and sell any bits of private or public information to anyone.

Design and experience. I built Analog.Cafe from scratch to be the fastest and best-looking blog for film photographers. The comments follow this ethos by loading minimal, tailor-made code only.

Rules.

As you would expect, offensive, threatening, off-topic, and spam comments will be removed. Users known for repeat offences will be suspended. I will also not tolerate perpetual toxic traits on this website. I welcome your feedback and questions about this policy.

I am not blocking or censoring swear words as long as they comply with the above, but the content in the comments will need to be SFW for now.

New community members will have their first comment pending approval until I get the time to moderate — I’m aiming to have a 24h cycle for approval and replies in comments. It may be longer if I’m on vacation or unavailable. I haven’t yet built a tool to notify you when your comment is approved — I’m working on that.

Like features, I expect the rules to evolve with your feedback. Which, by the way, I encourage you to share below. 😁