Caboom! Comment Anywhere, Bring Onto Own Media

In the IndieWeb movement there's a concept of "POSSE" - Publish Once, Simultaneously Syndicate Elsewhere.

You should publish your words, pictures, songs, reviews on your own site. And then you can choose to share them out to where your audience is. Perhaps that's posting the link on Facebook, or a copy of a photo on Instagram, or sharing the episode on YouTube.

There's no shame in meeting your audience where they are - but the canonical version should be somewhere you control.

But what about the conversation? Social media is about socialising. People who comment on LinkedIn can't see the comments on Mastodon and vice versa.

This is where the concept of "CABOOM!" (exclamation optional) comes in⁰. As far as practical, you should bring the various comment threads together so everyone can see them¹.

There are a few ways to do this - choose whichever is right for you.

Do Nothing

Let people self-discover that you syndicate. Perhaps they'll stumble upon a bunch of people discussing your post over on Slashdot. That's fine, but a little hard work.

Point to your syndication sites

At the bottom of your post, you can say "Click here to read the comments on MySpace!"

Find other sources

Did someone share your post to HackerNews? Add a link on your page to the orange-site so that others can read what's being said.

Convert comments to WebMentions

Using a service like Brid.gy you can "upgrade" external comments to WebMentions. They will appear on your post as normal comments, but with a link back to their original location.

(Ab)use APIs

Services like Reddit have APIs. You could pull in a complete comment thread and present it on your own site.

Make backups

Some of those external sites are going to break one day. Take a backup using Archive.org or snap a screenshots. Perhaps link to those if the original goes away.

Be mindful of others' feelings

I've previously discussed the ethics of syndicating comments using WebMentions. Not everyone wants their comment copied back to your site. Some people regularly delete comments. Or they may have valid copyright concerns. Just because someone has written something in public, it doesn't mean it is in the public domain. Be kind to your commenters and respect their wishes.

Have fun

There is literally no-one policing this. If you don't want to do it, that's fine. If you want to give it your best effort, that's also fine.