banner – Climb to the Stars

[fr] J'étais une inconditionnelle de la première heure de coComment. Je les ai même eus comme clients. Aujourd'hui j'ai le coeur lourd, car après le désastre de la version 2.0 "beta", le redesign du site qui le laisse plus confus qu'avant, les fils RSS qui timent out, le blog sans âme et les pubs qui clignotent, je me retrouve avec de grosses bannières autopromotionnelles dans mon tumblelog, dans lequel j'ai intégré le flux RSS de mes commentaires.

Just a little earlier this evening, my heart sank. It sank because of this:

That is a screenshot of [my Tumblr](http://steph.tumblr.com). And what [coComment](http://cocomment.com) is doing here — basically, inserting a huge self-promotional banner in their RSS feed — is really rude.

I’m really sad, because I used to love coComment. I was involved (not much, but still) [early on](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/02/04/cocomment-enfin-public/) and was a first-hour fan. They [were even my client for over six months](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/04/13/im-working-for-cocomment/), during which I acted as a community manager, gave feedback on features to the team, and [wrote a whole bunch of blog posts](http://climbtothestars.org/categories/cocomment/). This ended, sadly, [when coComment finally incorporated](http://blog.cocomment.com/2007/01/12/launch-notice/), because we couldn’t reach an agreement as to the terms of my engagement.

Inserting content in the RSS feeds is only the latest in a series of disappointments I’ve had with the service. I used to have a sidebar widget to show the last comments I’d made all over the place on my blog, but I removed it at some point — I can’t remember when — because it had stopped working. I tried adding it again, but for some reason WordPress can’t find the feed. It seemed very slow when I tried to access it directly, so maybe it’s timing out — and I think I recall that is what made me remove it in the first place.

I’m sad also to see blinking ads on the coComment site, confusing navigation, pages with [click here](http://www.cocomment.com/tools/owner) links, and [a blog which has no soul](http://blog.cocomment.com/), filled with post after post of press-release-like “we won this contest”, “we’re sponsoring this event”, “version xyz released”, “we were here too” — all too often on behalf of a mostly faceless “coComment Team”. CoComment used to have something going, but to me it now seems like an exciting promise that lost its way somewhere along the line.

[Last August](http://blog.cocomment.com/2007/08), the [version](http://www.myopenletters.com/2007/08/08/smooth-move-cocomments/) [2.0](http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2007/08/the_last_week_h.html) [beta](http://blog.fupps.com/2007/08/21/cocomment-apologizes/) [disaster](http://blog.cocomment.com/2007/08/21/were-sorry/) made me cringe with embarrassment for my former love (who on earth takes all their users [back to beta](http://blog.cocomment.com/2007/08/03/cocomment-v2-beta-update/) when 1.0 was stable?) and left many blogs paralyzed, including my own. I started writing a blog post, at the time, which I never published, as other things got in the way. Here’s what I’d written:

> I reinstalled the extension yesterday (I’d removed it a few months ago because I suspected it might be involved in a lot of browser hang-ups) but had to uninstall it a couple of hours later:

> – too many non-comment textareas get the coco-bar
– blacklisting seems broken
– pop-up requesting info confirmation for website blocking form submission of non-comment forms, even though coco-bar was removed AND extension was deactivated for the page.

> It would be nice to be able to read some clear and detailed information about these issues and their resolution on the blog, so that I know when it’s worth trying the extension again.

> Also, a **major** issue is that when the coComment server isn’t responding, people cannot leave comments on integrated/enhanced blogs (like this one, or my personal blog). I had to remove coComment integration from my blog so that coComment downtime doesn’t prevent my readers from leaving comments.

***Update:** in case this wasn’t clear first time around, these problems have since then been solved and [coComment apologized for the mess](http://blog.cocomment.com/2007/08/21/were-sorry/). It doesn’t erase the pain, though.*

So, coComment — and Matt — are you listening?

You’re in the process of alienating somebody who was one of your most passionate users — if you haven’t lost me already. I cared. I forgave. I waited. I hoped. But right now, I don’t have the impression you care much about me. I’ve seen excuses, I’ve even seen justifications, and now I see large ugly banners in my Tumblr. What happened to you?

*You’ll have understood, I hope, that this is not just about me. This is about the people who use your service. The service you provide is for us, right?*

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