Allow comments without login

grumpyguy · November 18, 2013

Is there a way to allow for comments without requiring a person to login. we use this during judging at our camera club and people don't have a smugmug account and (believe it or not) no facebook account. I know it could be risky without capcha but maybe we could get this back too.

thanks......

denisegoldberg · November 18, 2013

This has been requested in the SmugMug Feature Request forum. See allow anonymous comments.

--- Denise

Max13 · January 20, 2015

I am just close to the decision to leave my smugmug account and change the provider - and this is one of the reasons of this decision. In my opinion it just scandal that it is impossible to leave the opinion without logging and not having eg. facebook account (which I even fight against).
Even anonymous opinion shouuld be allowed - we as the owners of account know very well how to manage it.

leftquark · January 30, 2015

Max13 wrote: »

we as the owners of account know very well how to manage it.

There are some of you who manage your SmugMug accounts very closely, login often, interact every day, find their way to our help forums here on dgrin, etc that can manage comments easily. We love that you use SmugMug so frequently and can keep on top of things but, unfortunately, you're also an extreme minority. We tried anonymous comments and for the strong majority of SmugMug customers, their comments filled up with spam message after spam message after spam message. We tried adding Captcha and everyone complained. We do realize that requiring facebook is annoying and frustrating, especially for those that don't have facebook, and we have some plans to make some improvements to this.

agallia · January 31, 2015

Okay, understand the effort to avoid spam, and I agree that someone wishing to leave worthwhile comment ought to have no problem with logging in. Two questions:

Can Twitter login be added?
Can the 'You must login...' message in box be changed by owner?

rainforest1155 · February 1, 2015

Hi Al,
Right now, we only support Facebook and Google+ for our comment authentication. Of course, if you have your own SmugMug account and are logged into that, that'll allow you to comment right away without having to log into any other services.

I'm not aware of a way to change the login messaging.

Shinrya · February 3, 2015

I know this has been suggested and requested numerous times before but I'm just gonna drop it again so it might one day be a legitimate addition Smugmug can make happen.

Disqus comments plugin please!

agallia · February 4, 2015

rainforest1155 wrote: »

Hi Al,
Right now, we only support Facebook and Google+ for our comment authentication. Of course, if you have your own SmugMug account and are logged into that, that'll allow you to comment right away without having to log into any other services.

I'm not aware of a way to change the login messaging.

Thanks.

Max13 · February 4, 2015

leftquark wrote: »

There are some of you who manage your SmugMug accounts very closely, login often, interact every day, find their way to our help forums here on dgrin, etc that can manage comments easily. We love that you use SmugMug so frequently and can keep on top of things but, unfortunately, you're also an extreme minority. We tried anonymous comments and for the strong majority of SmugMug customers, their comments filled up with spam message after spam message after spam message.

I do not want to be sarcastic - but it seems you know better what is the best for your customers. I know that for me the best would be to introduce the possibility of comments without login - and it is not difficult to add such possibility as an option. It is hard for me to accept such approach .

leftquark · February 6, 2015

I understand why the Social Network requirement doesn't work for people -- some people haven't signed up for social networks.

We want to provide the best experience we can, in a way that makes sense and is useful. Anonymous comments is a bit tricky because it means that some basic things that you'd want to do with comments aren't possible: for example, replying. If the person is anonymous, how would you reply to them? If you're trying to sell photos and someone comments anonymously that they want to purchase your photos but they don't give a name or an email address, how do you respond to them? How do we notify them that you responded to them on your page? What happens if someone posts rude comments? How do we prevent them from harassing in the future?

I really want to understand what the real issue is. At a minimum, do we all agree that some kind of name/email address is required? If the user has to enter those 2 things, is there a difference with entering an email address and a password? If so, what's the difference? Answering these things helps us understand truely why you want these features so we can build them to meet the actual need. It helps us make a better product for everyone!

agallia · February 6, 2015

leftquark wrote: »

I understand why the Social Network requirement doesn't work for people -- some people haven't signed up for social networks....I really want to understand what the real issue is. At a minimum, do we all agree that some kind of name/email address is required? If the user has to enter those 2 things, is there a difference with entering an email address and a password? If so, what's the difference? Answering these things helps us understand truely why you want these features so we can build them to meet the actual need. It helps us make a better product for everyone!

I agree wholeheartedly with basic contact info like name/valid email address and the option to sign in with FB or G+. But I do not believe a person MUST have a basic Smugmug account to leave a comment if he doesn't have FB or G+. I suggest the option to turn the Smugmug login requirement ON/OFF be added to Owners account settings. Regards.

leftquark · February 7, 2015

agallia wrote: »

I agree wholeheartedly with basic contact info like name/valid email address and the option to sign in with FB or G+. But I do not believe a person MUST have a basic Smugmug account to leave a comment if he doesn't have FB or G+. I suggest the option to turn the Smugmug login requirement ON/OFF be added to Owners account settings. Regards.

What about if there was some sort of free SmugMug account that could be used for the purposes of interacting with photos?

denisegoldberg · February 7, 2015

leftquark wrote: »

What about if there was some sort of free SmugMug account that could be used for the purposes of interacting with photos?

I don't believe it's an issue of free or not here, it's an issue of Smug forcing the use of a login for comments when the site owner does not want login to be required. I would prefer to allow the individual who wants to leave a comment to choose whether or not to login. I would opt to set my site up to allow comments without login.

Yes, I'd prefer to have an email address so I can communicate with the person who comments. But I know that the requirement to log in will likely stop people from commenting. When I look back at my guestbook entries from legacy smug, many people did not log in anywhere. Some provided actual names, some didn't. Some logged in, some didn't.

--- Denise

agallia · February 7, 2015

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I don't believe it's an issue of free or not here, it's an issue of Smug forcing the use of a login for comments when the site owner does not want login to be required. I would prefer to allow the individual who wants to leave a comment to choose whether or not to login. I would opt to set my site up to allow comments without login.

Yes, I'd prefer to have an email address so I can communicate with the person who comments. But I know that the requirement to log in will likely stop people from commenting. When I look back at my guestbook entries from legacy smug, many people did not log in anywhere. Some provided actual names, some didn't. Some logged in, some didn't.

--- Denise

I know it is so difficult to make everyone happy on this issue. But I tend to agree with Denise...no forced Smugmug login, free or not. Perhaps settings similar to selected Wordpress 'Discussion' settings could be added to Smugmug owner settings giving us options on what we want, maybe for Power plans and above. Perhaps a plugin like Akismet?

rkw624 · February 11, 2015

All I know is that I have not had a single comment made in well over a year. Just give the account owner the option to require a log in or not.

leftquark · February 11, 2015

rkw624 wrote: »

All I know is that I have not had a single comment made in well over a year. Just give the account owner the option to require a log in or not.

We have some data that indicates that the drop-off in commenting on NeXT is associated to the new designs. Commenting is essentially hidden and that's the major cause in lack of comments. It's something we need to find a solution for. We make your images the center of attention: they're as big as possible and take up most if not all of the screen real estate (for example on SmugMug gallery style), or we don't offer the ability to comment on the photos at all, except in the Lightbox (Collage and Thumbnail style). In Journal and Lightbox, the only way to leave comments is to notice the very small chat-bubble icon, click that, and then click add.

We're going to fix this in the future. Interaction with your photos, including commenting, is one area in which we’re going to look to improve in the future. We want to make it easier and better for people to engage with and enjoy your photos. We have a lot of ideas on how we can make this happen and you will see the efforts we’re going to take in the future.

Allen · February 11, 2015

For a Smugmug style gallery the only place I can see something added without interfering with the content above is a message
just below the page nav under the thumbs. Something like "See/Add Comments Below" is all that's needed. A slight scroll is needed
now to see any caption so the message would be easiely visible. Or perhaps message inline with the page nav, float left/float right.
Plenty of room for that.

Please don't add it with the Buy and Slideshow buttons as that now completely destroys the gallery description removing
about 20% of the description box width. BTW, the Buy and Slideshow buttons need to be moved to the right end of the
breadcrumb line which is unused space and give us back 100% description width.

leftquark · February 11, 2015

Allen wrote: »

For a Smugmug style gallery the only place I can see something added without interfering with the content above is a message just below the page nav under the thumbs. Something like "See/Add Comments Below" is all that's needed. A slight scroll is needed now to see any caption so the message would be easiely visible. Or perhaps message inline with the page nav, float left/float right.
Plenty of room for that.

Please don't add it with the Buy and Slideshow buttons as that now completely destroys the gallery description removing about 20% of the description box width.

We have an amazing design team that has a number of ideas. I'll toss yours into the mix. We have no intention of cluttering the design any more than it already is.

Allen wrote: »

BTW, the Buy and Slideshow buttons need to be moved to the right end of the breadcrumb line which is unused space and give us back 100% description width.

We've had users ask us to move the Buy/Slideshow buttons even closer to the image. It all comes down to user preference and the beauty of SmugMug is that anyone (with a little help) can use Custom CSS to meet your own preferences

uketeecee · February 12, 2015

I vote for anonymous comments too.

My Smug is password protected so my visitors are already logged in; why do they need to log-in again?

I used to get lots of comments but none since the new requirement.

leftquark · February 12, 2015

uketeecee wrote: »

My Smug is password protected so my visitors are already logged in; why do they need to log-in again?

Anonymous comments doesn't give you any indication of who left you that comment. Similarly, just having the gallery password doesn't tell you who left that comment either. We think this kind of information is important to you and, having tried anonymous comments in the past with some extremely major headaches, have no plans to go back. I understand you may want anonymous comments but we feel that the community is better served by knowing who left the comment.

uketeecee wrote: »

I used to get lots of comments but none since the new requirement.

I see you did have a few comments recently. Looking through your comments it seems roughly similar to the number of comments you had in Legacy SmugMug. Some of our research suggests that the new designs are the some of culprit for why commenting has tapered off: commenting is hidden well below the screen on your site and blends in a bit with the details around it. It's very easy for people to miss it. We feel that interaction with your photos is extremely important and we're going to spend some time in the future to make it easier for people to engage with your photos.

pmbpro · February 12, 2015

uketeecee wrote: »

I vote for anonymous comments too.

I used to get lots of comments but none since the new requirement.

I've only had one or two comments on my 'Guestbook' page since the new design. :-(
I had several pages of comments before, in the legacy design. I want people to be able to comment again without having to log into Facebook or any social media account.

uketeecee · February 12, 2015

leftquark wrote: »

I see you did have a few comments recently. Looking through your comments it seems roughly similar to the number of comments you had in Legacy SmugMug.

Yes, there have been some comments since new Smug, all of them by me.

I can leave comments but none of my guests bother to log into Google nor Facebook so I leave comments on their behalf when they phone me.

Please understand that because my site is password protected I know who my guests are. They are all people I have given the password to. I trust them all. I know who they are. I don't have any 'anonymous' visitors.

Why not default to logged-in comments but give us the choice? Surely it's not that hard?

You guys can do magic, this must be a simple job?

- Terry

Max13 · February 14, 2015

leftquark wrote: »

I understand why the Social Network requirement doesn't work for people -- some people haven't signed up for social networks.

We want to provide the best experience we can, in a way that makes sense and is useful. Anonymous comments is a bit tricky because it means that some basic things that you'd want to do with comments aren't possible: for example, replying. If the person is anonymous, how would you reply to them? If you're trying to sell photos and someone comments anonymously that they want to purchase your photos but they don't give a name or an email address, how do you respond to them? How do we notify them that you responded to them on your page? What happens if someone posts rude comments? How do we prevent them from harassing in the future?

I really want to understand what the real issue is. At a minimum, do we all agree that some kind of name/email address is required? If the user has to enter those 2 things, is there a difference with entering an email address and a password? If so, what's the difference? Answering these things helps us understand truely why you want these features so we can build them to meet the actual need. It helps us make a better product for everyone!

I do not share your opinion at all. The most important issue is the fact that you are the Provider and I am the Customer. It seems that you know better what is the best for me. There is no acceptance for such point of view. Instead of worrying about "possible spam" and immaturity of your customers I would suggest to focus on the main issue: how to set up the option for us (customers) to choose what we prefer. I prefer the option with anonymous opinions, I know how to manage my account because I know what I pay for. Limiting the possibility of comments only for FB, G or Smug Mug owners is not acceptable. I can even accept the risk of spam (which I can easily manage). This is what I expressed as well in your survey and it can be the main reason that I will close my account with Smug Mug.

Lille Ulven · February 22, 2015

Well I would love to have commenting on my site without the requirement of the commentator being logged in to something. I guess some people would start commenting on my page than rather than well telling me on the phone / at work / via email / regular mail.

What I think would work is, is if those who comment would have to fill in their name (or a nick name) and email address - optionally their website. Their email address would not be shown in the comment but could be used to block spammers and trolls in case they behave like such.
But that would mean that they are not required to have a google or Facebook account - which many refuse to have as both companies are known to be data collectors and many people fear for their privacy by getting such accounts. And well some of those I know just don't want a second email address including all that password mess that comes with it.
Sure free smugmug-accounts just for commenting would sound nice. But again people are afraid. What is free today might not be free tomorrow. What is offered free often has come to them with hidden costs... So they won't sign up for it, especially if they do not want to build their own photo websites.

For the captchas - well there are those and there are others. Those where you have to figure out the letters in them... Seriously my eyesight is pretty good, but I have had trouble doing that because I just could not figure these letters overlaying each other. But the new ones are a little better - the ones where you have to drag a picture of something to a fitting picture - some ice cream to a ice waffle or similar.
Maybe offering it as a sort of selection like this would be an option:

1) I want high spam protection (don't want to deal with it myself), I know this might result in less comments. => Commentators have to login via FB/G+/Smugmug
2) I want to make sure that there is no google boot or spam, yet I can deal with a little less automatic protection (and need my commentators mail address) => emailaddress, name + optional website have to be entered. With an option to block email addresses that have been used for spam in the future in the comment handling.
3) I want to make sure there is a person behind the comment, but I don't need any contact information => captcha will do the trick
4) I don't want any automatic protection at all, will handle all spam & trolls myself (and will not ask the smug mug team to help me handle it - should I ever request help with this or have to be helped as my site is no longer accessible due to all the spam that I did not clear up I will be automatically transferred to group 3 and cannot vote down to group 4) => no login / captcha required
Maybe let those for option four sign a statement like "I will clean out my comments every day, in sickness or health, in hospital or on the moon there is nothing in the world that could ever stop me on handling it on a daily basis ;-)

Could this be the way to make everybody happy without killing our websites with way too much unhandled spam?

uketeecee · February 25, 2015

Something like this would be ideal...

Max13 · March 1, 2015

All suggestions - just like voices crying in the wilderness...... SmugMug Team knows better what is good for us......

Ferguson · March 6, 2015

Haven't been around lately, but this thread is near and dead to me.

leftquark wrote: »

We tried anonymous comments and for the strong majority of SmugMug customers, their comments filled up with spam message after spam message after spam message. We tried adding Captcha and everyone complained. We do realize that requiring facebook is annoying and frustrating, especially for those that don't have facebook, and we have some plans to make some improvements to this.

First, I doubt everyone complained, as at least one person never saw anonymous-on-Captcha-off, but that's an aside. If you want to be amused watch the recent SNL skit on "literally".

This thread is different from some prior, in that it emphasizes the customer's experience, and that is great. Prior threads (at least some) for reference spoke of, distilled, "we cannot allow child porn [etc] in comments without trace-ability". Essentially "The Lawyers made us do it". So long as it stays in that vein, I stopped arguing, because, like most of us customers, we are in no position to evaluate your risk in that venue.

But... if the real issue is your customer satisfaction, I still find it hard to believe the following cannot make everyone happy:

- Anonymous comments: Off, on, default off

Really -- isn't it that simple? The people you get filled with spam will only get it if they ASK for it by turning anonymous comments on. Unhappy -- turn it back off. And maybe:

- When leaving a comment anonymously, Capthca on, but not if authenticated.

There are new variants I've seen that are much easier to read, and I get that robots are a real issue.

leftquark wrote: »

I understand why the Social Network requirement doesn't work for people -- some people haven't signed up for social networks.

Indeed not. I offer the other observation - many customers of professional photographers who are looking for PRINTS may specifically be those not so involved in social media. My own feeling is the dramatic falloff in interest in professional quality photography has been Facebook-quality, on-phone photos that became "good enough". Less connected parents, friends, etc. may well be the very customers professional must seek more strongly for high quality business, as opposed to thumbnail, blurred cell phone selfies.

leftquark wrote: »

We want to provide the best experience we can, in a way that makes sense and is useful. Anonymous comments is a bit tricky because it means that some basic things that you'd want to do with comments aren't possible: for example, replying. If the person is anonymous, how would you reply to them? If you're trying to sell photos and someone comments anonymously that they want to purchase your photos but they don't give a name or an email address, how do you respond to them? How do we notify them that you responded to them on your page? What happens if someone posts rude comments? How do we prevent them from harassing in the future?

I get it but to each such statement you must ask "what is the alternative". If the alternative is no comment at all, I'll take the anonymous comment.

This is also fixable with small amounts of interaction, e.g. when someone goes to leave a comment, have the next dialog (captcha or whatever) include a highlighted note -- "You are currently anonymous, we want your comment and anonymous is OK, but if you would care to log in first, please click any of the services below." Or some such -- I'm sure some more artistic folks can make this both pretty, informative, and not obnoxious.

And it solves that problem with less side effects -- An anonymous commenter who insists on remaingin anonymous can, and (provided the customer allows) can leve a comment. An anonymous commenter who is anonymous by mistake is reminded to log in.

leftquark wrote: »

I really want to understand what the real issue is. At a minimum, do we all agree that some kind of name/email address is required?

No.

As above -- it should really be up to your customer to decide if an email is REQUIRED, not a site-wide restriction.

leftquark wrote: »

We have some data that indicates that the drop-off in commenting on NeXT is associated to the new designs. Commenting is essentially hidden and that's the major cause in lack of comments. It's something we need to find a solution for.

On that we agree. I don't have a good suggestion in Collage for example (maybe a clickable overlay on commented shots, hover-show-comment, not sure. But it is a different subject (though I understand your association of the falloff with that). I think I have had 1 or 2 comments total since conversion, and I refuse to believe it is solely because it is more difficult, as most of my comments are gallery oriented (they are from sporting events).

leftquark wrote: »

We're going to fix this in the future. Interaction with your photos, including commenting, is one area in which we’re going to look to improve in the future. We want to make it easier and better for people to engage with and enjoy your photos. We have a lot of ideas on how we can make this happen and you will see the efforts we’re going to take in the future.

I am glad to hear that. So does that mean the lawyers are out of the picture, that this is not about pedophilia, but about customer experience?

leftquark wrote: »

We think this kind of information is important to you and, having tried anonymous comments in the past with some extremely major headaches, have no plans to go back. I understand you may want anonymous comments but we feel that the community is better served by knowing who left the comment.

Leftquark, I really appreciate that you are having this conversation but I wish you would re-read what you wrote in various replies above in total, basically:

The information is important to us, and past comments say you want to understand our needs -- but you pretty pointedly take the one thing we keep asking for off the table.

Why can't this conversation be about how to implement what we want (Anonymous comments) in a way that does not create major headaches.

This is very like the old joke about Ford's "You can have any color car you want, so long as it is black". It's funny only now, at the time it would have been infuriating to customers.

Max13 wrote: »

All suggestions - just like voices crying in the wilderness...... SmugMug Team knows better what is good for us......

I believe there is an honest desire to give us something, but I still read that the word has come down from on high "never do anonymous comments, never, ever, under any circumstances" and the rest is all just discussion of what flavor non-anonymous comments we can have.

So... really? Are they completely off the table? Or will you let your customers try to help you come up with an approach that gets rid of the headaches?

Lille Ulven · March 6, 2015

From recent experience I can spot three more things with comments...

1) I asked someone for special purpose to put a comment to a certain photo. Well they tried with their google account and were still unable to do so. I have no clue why as it works for one of my google accounts (while not being logged into smugmug). I'll so some more research on that one once I can actually see what that person is doing.

2) Just testing this myself... the not so nice thing is that who ever is commenting on my site will be logged in with their commenting-page (google/fb/smugmug) - there is no chance for them to get logged out. So eventually if someone was commenting from a machine in an internet cafe using their google account the next person using the same computer could potentially comment in the first persons name. (Good that would work too in case person 1 forgot to logout afterwards... but here it is more of a default...)
Edit: I found out that one is logged in with google (and probably Facebook as well) until one actually goes to the google/fb page and logs out from there. This I think is very inconvenient.

3) I would think that the "require comment approval"-button is a little too good hidden. It really should be placed under the main-page's comment section and not require me to use the "details" button there. Because who looks into those details (well I will do now) when there is no comment, I would not have...
And once I am on it: what about a function that allows me the site-owner to decide which comments can stay on my page and which I don't want there. After all someone could take the time and place some nasty stuff there... yet removing comments (unless one requires approval maybe) is not an option in that detail page...

So yea, a few more wishes for the comments from my side.

Happy weekend

Lille Ulven

Max13 · March 7, 2015

Ferguson - I totally agree with your comment . For me, the most important issue is as good as saying: we are the Customers (big C....) and it should really be up to us to decide which option we prefer. But it seems that the Smugmug Team is deaf to our pleas and suggestions.

agallia · March 7, 2015

Also agree with Ferguson. Anonymous comments: Off, on, default off added to Comments Details. How about it, SM?

leftquark · March 9, 2015

agallia wrote: »

Also agree with Ferguson. Anonymous comments: Off, on, default off added to Comments Details. How about it, SM?

For anything we implement, we need to fully understand why a certain feature will be useful for our Customers so that we can measure its success and value. I keep reading that people want Anonymous Comments, but nobody has explained why they want anonymous. Please help me understand why you want this and what problem anonymous commenting will solve. I, for one, do not want anonymous comments because I want to be able to respond to and interact with my visitors and that's not possible with anonymous comments.

Some of you have explained that you nobody is commenting on your photos. Anonymous commenting is not the reason why people aren't commenting. It may be a small piece but anonymous comments is not going to solve the problem of lack of comments. We're going to do some things in the future to increase interaction on your photos but please help me understand why you want anonymous comments.