I’ve just moved the comments on this blog to the IntenseDebate system. It adds quite a bit of functionality to the comments, including threaded discussions (which are part of the new version 2.7 of WP, but I haven’t upgraded just yet…) and the ability to rate comments as useful or not (assuming you are logged into an IntenseDebate account).
If you have an account, it also means that you can keep a track of the comments you make on other blogs that use the IntenseDebate system, which also produces an RSS feed. The other useful thing for blog owners is that while the comments are hosted by IntenseDebate for the purposes of their services, a mirror of them is still held in your WordPress database, so you switch back to a more traditional way of doing comments without losing anything.
I still think there is an opportunity for a more open way of tracking comments around the web – at the moment the solutions are either tied into everyone using the same service – whether IntenseDebate or something like CoComment – or people doing their own thing, like Steph Gray who tags the blog posts he comments on with a certain keyword in Delicious, the feed from which he then republishes in his blog sidebar.
Anyway, I’d appreciate any feedback you have on my use of Intense Debate here on DavePress.