Man, I really need to step up my commenting game. I’m not saying I need to game the system or whatever.. you know what I’m talking about.

Just look at it. It’s not good.

Even if you don’t know what clout is you can guess that three is pretty low. We aren’t playing golf here, the point isn’t to get as low as possible.

What is Disqus clout?

Glad you asked. Without going too deep into what the Disqus comment system is and how it is similar or different to other comment systems (including the one built-in to Wordpress), the high-level overview is that Disqus manages my comments on this blog, as well as comments on thousands of other blogs. Because these comments are managed centrally, on Disqus’ site, this means that people using the system to write a comment only need one login everywhere that Disqus is used.

Aside from the convenience of a single login, this also means that each user gets assigned a clout value. By default the clout value is 1. When you comment on a blog, and someone likes your comment, they have the option of voting your comment up using a small arrow next to the comment. Each vote adds one to your clout. Conversely, they can vote you down as well, taking away a point.

As you can see the official FAQ documentation is deliberately vague. I believe that clout can’t drop below 1 (at least, I’ve never seen negative clout), and right now, having a lot of clout points doesn’t really net you anything awesome except a certain kind of Disqus-specific prestige. So far.

So Lets Talk About My Clout

Yeah, so the point is, my clout is in bad shape. I’m not sure if this is because my commenting is spotty and of low-quality (probably) or people are forgivably forgetting to vote my comments up (they are busy, no worries), or there is a vast conspiracy to destroy my clout rating (they follow me wherever I go!) Whatever the reason, I am now on a campaign to get it higher. Take a look at some of my peers’ clout ratings:

Ok, so putting Daniel Ha in there can be seen as cheating since he is a Disqus developer, and pretty much answers all the questions on the Disqus Blog and Forum.

Also, I cleverly didn’t list anyone who had less than 10 clout. Hey, it’s my blog.

What You Can Do To Help

Ok, so my goal is to provide more insightful and interesting comments on a wider variety of blogs using Disqus. What you as a Disqus user can do, to me and anyone else you notice writing a good comment, is to vote more. Or, if you are lazy, you can just vote me up.

I won’t complain. I promise.

posted May 13th, 2008 in Humor | Tags: clout, comment, disqus