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Comment by z3t4 | Hacker News Reader

Idea: Send comments as e-mail plus save it in cookie, so when the commenter reads the comments he sees his/her comment. Then a moderator or blog owner hooks his CMS or static site generator into the e-mail program/service and he/she can also reply to comments by replying to the e-mail! Or delete the comment by deleting the e-mail. He/she could use a dedicated e-mail box like comments@yourdomain.com. It would even work without JavaScript (form action mailto)! And no server required except a e-mail service.

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I've been doing something like this, but cruder (no cookie) on my personal site for some years: https://lee-phillips.org/. I like to be able to decide if a comment is useful for my readers before including it on the page.

How will commenters submit their comments? Would they be required to enter their email? Or are you implying an email address would be generated for them to associate with their activity/comment chain?

  <form action="mailto:comments@yourdomain.com">
    <input type="hidden" name="subject" value="A new comment on the thingy" />
    <textarea name="body" rows="10" cols="41"></textarea><br>
    <button type="submit">Submit comment</button>
  </form>

When the form is submitted the default mail program will be started, subject will be the subject and body will be the body. Now assuming the user does have a e-mail client, all he/she has to do is to click send.

You can then read, delete, and reply to comments, and even send private replies, all via your e-mail client. Then you add the comments to your web-site either manually, or have a script do it automatically.

Startup idea: application that automatically syndicates comment threads in your email inbox back to your website.

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