Sunday 10 January 2010

What is Echo?

Echo is a commenting system provided by JS-Kit that many blogs use.

Why do many blogs use it if it "sucks"?

Ah, well that's because we all used to use Haloscan comments and Haloscan didn't suck.

And what was Haloscan?

I just told you, it was a commenting system where readers of blogs could comment on a specific blogpost by clicking on the word "comments" and texting into a pop-up box.

And you can't do that with Echo?

Well, yes you can do that with Echo.

But?

With haloscan a box would appear requesting, on a voluntary basis, screenname, email address and homepage url.

And Echo doesn't do that?

No, it doesn't.

What does it do instead of that?

Nothing. It simply gets your screenname or it doesn't and let's you comment in the box.

Can you show me an example of a specific comment in the new system?

Sorry, no I can't. The new system doesn't do unique urls for comments unless they are "recent comments".

Well can you show me an example of a specific comment in the old system?

I'm not being funny but I can't do that either. Unfortunately, JS-Kit has turned all the haloscan comments into Echo comments so all old haloscan comments, together with the email addresses and home pages of the commenters have gone.

So why did you change to Echo?

I was threatened.

Whaaaaat? What with?

Losing all of the comments since Spring 2004 if I didn't stump up $9.99.

That's bad?

Well yes it is bad because many of us had already paid $12 for lifetime premium accounts with haloscan and even those that didn't pay had a legitimate expectation of continued service given the amount of work that many people put into comment systems and other opportunity costs.

So did you pay?

No choice, I had to or risk losing the comments.

Are there other issues?

More later....

Well can you complain?

They have a "support" site but I appear to have been banned from it.

Can you contact other users?

Not as easy as you'd think which is why I have set up this blog. Perhaps it could become a meeting place for people to discuss the various remedies for people who have been cheated out of a good system and $9.99 or $12 depending on how you view it.
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