## Using Bubble for gemlog comments. Is this Crazy?

Last evening I was just thinking about some barriers that exist in gemini that kind of prevent people from interaction. Thinking of the web of (and this is weird to type) decades past, when we would read blogs and forums, and if we had something to say relative to the conversation, there would be a way to add a comment.

Some blogs would not allow comments (and that’s ok, not everyone wants to deal with moderation / internet a-holes). Other blogs would “outsource” their comment system, as James Hague said[a].

=> https://prog21.dadgum.com/57.html [a]

One simple system, widely used in geminispace, was for a gemlog author to publish their email, and ask people to email them if they had any comments. This certainly offers a low-resistance way to contact the author, but would not foster discussions, as these comments would not be available for everyone else (unless the author, manually or with some scripting, updates the gemlog post).

This led me to think about creating a simple system that could work like this:

* Someone writes a gemlog post 
* They then go to this hypothetical system and create a “comments page” for this post 
* This being gemini and in an effort to keep things simple, they link to this comments page at the end of their post: “Read comments / Leave a comment here” 
* That would be it 

(Some sort of server-side processing could also be done to retrieve the comments and display them in the original post, but not strictly necessary, in my opinion. Comments should be an extra/optional, and be treated like that. At least in my simple idea). Including something like this would make it only accesible to people who a) have a cgi-capable hosting for their gemlog, b) have the time and ability to code it.

This, obviously, and like any other comment system, would come with downsides (which, in a way, can be seen as upsides as well): the most obvious ones being:

* It’s centralized 
* moderation / comment approval / internet a-holes 

While I was mulling these things over in my head, I realized that Bubble[a] already exists, bbs[b] being, I guess, the most known instance.

=> gemini://skyjake.fi/bubble/ [a]
=> gemini://bbs.geminispace.org [b]

I think Bubble, the software, could be used for such a “comment system”, more or less like this:

* A gemlog author could create a subspace for their gemlog 
* and then, create a post for every gemlog entry 
* profit 

This could be done in a centralized way (if someone installed bubble and set up a domain like “gemlogs-comments.xyz”), or, if people were so inclined, every author could install a Bubble instance alonside their gemlog (this is yet another barrier, sadly, but overcomes the “centralized” downside. Which, in a way, can be seen as an upside, allowing people to discover other gemlogs the way Cosmos[a] does nowadays)

=> gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/s/Cosmos [a]

As a proof of concept, I’ll create a post in my “personal feed” in bbs.geminispace.org, hidden from the “All Posts” list, and from the Gemini/Atom feed, and link it at the end of this gemlog entry. I would encourage anyone that finds this gemlog entry to share your thoughts there, and that way we’ll see if this makes any sense, and how usable it can really be.

This gemlog gets also automatically published via http (and gopher), so if you are seeing this on the web, I’m sorry this doesn’t make much sense :D. You can consider learning a bit about the “gemini protocol”, and eventually this gibberish would also make sense to you :)

=> gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/u/jmcs/26378 Read comments / Leave a comment here

Tags: gemini, comments, ideas
=> tag_gemini.gmi gemini
=> tag_comments.gmi comments
=> tag_ideas.gmi ideas


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