The comment system on this blog blows. It is a nice idea in spirit to make commenting equivalent to posting on your own blog, but the execution in frassle is too complex. I think if I had a simpler, faster way to leave comments, one that didn't require you to register, I would get more comments. From the perspective of frassle, setting up a weblog for each commentor is no big deal, but to a user, "set up your weblog" begins to sound like more of a commitment than you'd want to make just to call me on some bullshit I wrote. So the project for tonight is to build a comment system that first looks like all the other vanilla comment systems on MT/Radio/whatever blogs, and second follows the frassle model as closely as possible.

Here's how I might implement it. Some of this will not make sense unless you know frassle's data model (i.e. unless you are me):

• When you want to leave a comment, you may register/login or post without registering.
• If you post without registering, frassle makes up an fa_feeds entry for you of type local_anonymous. It stores in that entry a secret key that is also sent to your browser so that you have editing privileges over that feed.
• The anonymous option gives you control over a feed as long as you use the browser that has the original cookie. If you later sign up for an account using that browser, your local_anonymous fa_feed is converted to local and the cookie is deleted.
• That anonymous cookie is also used to key into the fa_feeds table to automatically recall your name/email address/home page URL data. Posting updates these fields.

The primary goals are a simple interface and a smooth path from commentor to frassle contributor (aka comments as the gateway drug).