Cartoon Brew Upgrades to Disqus Commenting System

Earlier this week, we upgraded our commenting system to the widely used Disqus. Certain aspects of our commenting system haven’t changed. For example, all comments are still moderated so they won’t appear immediately on the site. Also, because of the sensitive nature of a lot of industry-related issues, we still allow readers to comment anonymously without registering through any other site (although, as always, you must provide a valid working email address that won’t be seen by anyone but the moderators).

With Disqus, however, we are introducing a host of new features that we’d wanted for the Brew. For starters, the new system allows readers to log in via Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo and OpenID. The vast majority of readers have at least one of these accounts, and this hassle-free login means you don’t have to sign up for any new accounts to take advantage of the community features.

The community features allow readers to identify themselves with an avatar. Clicking on a reader’s name shows their profile and commenting history. “Liking” and “disliking” another other reader’s comments now helps to determine a comment’s placement on the site, with the most highly-rated ones promoted to the top of the comments and the low-rated ones at the bottom (or hidden from view). If you prefer, you can also view comments chronologically. Also, if you choose, you can be notified when someone replies to your comment on Cartoon Brew.

We’ve always taken a lot of pride in the quality of comments on the site. Sure, there are silly disagreements and dumb things are occasionally said, but at the end of the day, the comments represent the most robust and knowledgeable community of animation supporters on the Internet, from industry professionals to fans to students. You never know who’s going to comment here, and we’re thrilled that so many of our industry greats have participated in Cartoon Brew’s online community throughout the years, including David Silverman, Lauren Faust, Brad Bird, Chris Sanders, Paul Dini, Eric Goldberg, Gene Deitch, Bob Kurtz and Bill Kroyer. As the site continues to grow, we hope that you’ll participate in our community too, and help keep Cartoon Brew the hub of intelligent animation conversation.

We’re still in the transition phase and working out some of the quirks. Send any bug reports to our tech support page and we’ll look into it.