[HN Gopher] Show HN: A commenting system that works via email
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Show HN: A commenting system that works via email
Hi everyone, I made a commenting system that accepts submissions
via email, instead of requiring a login. The back story is I wanted
some interactivity for my site/blog, but I felt like requiring a
signup wouldn't be a good UX. I'm looking to get feedback on it
from the HN community. Please feel free to ask questions and let me
know your thoughts, especially what you don't like about it. If
it's a decent UX then I would like to make it OSS, as I feel that
it could potentially fill a void, especially for beautiful small
websites. Here's the basic flow of data: 1. When the site is
generated, mailto links embed information for where the future
comment will go 2. When a user clicks on a "comment" or "reply"
link, it opens a draft comment in their mail client. Instructions
are pre-baked into the email body. 3. When a user hits send, the
email is received by my software, which parses the email, validates
it for tampering against a pre-computed hash, and then opens a pull
request. The user gets an "auto-reply" email, informing them that
the submission was successful, along with a link to preview it. The
site moderator (so, in this case, me) gets an email, with links to
the PR. When the comment is approved, the site is rebuilt and
deployed. Other info and potential gotchas: * Emails are all
hashed for privacy (with a secret "pepper") that's occasionally
rotated * Comments are represented as individual files, so there
are no merge conflicts * DKIM, DMARC, and SPF are all checked to
help prevent spoofing There's a FAQ on the link above that has
more information, and you can also see a demo on my personal
website: https://spenc.es/writing/email-as-a-commenting-system/
Thanks for reading!
Author : asimpletune
Score : 11 points
Date : 2023-12-08 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (r3ply.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (r3ply.com)
| warrenm wrote:
| sounds a little like support/bug ticketing systems that support
| responding to a ticket by email with the ticket ID in the subject
| line - eg support@domain.tld
| asimpletune wrote:
| O, you're right. I've never tested any of those systems for how
| they react to either email spoofing or to see what happens if
| you change the subject line.
|
| If r3ply ends up being well received I'd like to add sort of a
| "CLI" interface to manage comments. E.g. you reply `EDIT <new
| comment>` to update your command, or the moderator can reply
| `APPROVE` or `REJECT` instead of going through a UI.
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(page generated 2023-12-08 23:01 UTC)