I'm sometimes asked why my posts here on my Known site don't let people comment on them.

The answer is: actually, they do. And I want to read your comments. Feedback is a gift.

Known, like p3k, Taproot and a number of other platforms, uses an open technology called webmention to power its comments. Plugins are also available to help WordPress use webmention.

What webmention gives us is a truly decentralized conversation: you can make a post on your site, mark it as being in reply to this post, and it'll show up as a comment here - but you also get to keep everything you've written on your own site. That way, even if my site goes away, you have a record of every conversation you've had with me. (If you want it.)

You don't need Known to leave a comment: you can use anything that supports webmention.

Through the power of webmention and Bridgy, you can also reply to this post on Twitter and Facebook (see the links at the bottom of the page for this post), and your response will show up here.

This isn't to say that we're not going to add public comments to Known. We are. But we want to make sure we do it right. Sites like Medium have shown interesting new models for user feedback that we're very interested in (and there are decentralized counterparts like marginalia).

We're definitely inviting feedback on this, and would love to read your thoughts. What kind of comments would you like to see?