I've used Disqus, Intense Debate, and Livefyre at various times. Disqus was my favorite by far, but a lot of people told me they had trouble commenting. 

 

I'm using Disqus on my blog and am happy with it so far. Do others also have negative experiences with Disqus, either when commenting or when using it on your site?

I never comment on blogs that use Facebook comments - I usually don't want my full name out there (even though it's not exactly hard for someone to find it). 

I've used Disqus, Intense Debate, and Livefyre at various times. Disqus was my favorite by far, but a lot of people told me they had trouble commenting. I'm now using Intense Debate and I've only had one non-specific complaint ("I wish you'd go back to regular WP comments") so I'm sticking with it for now. Since it's made by Auttomatic - same people as WP itself - I figure it must play fairly well with most plugins and such.

 

I should say that, as a general rule, I dislike any commenting system that requires a login, or makes it unusually cumbersome to just use a name/URL combo.  That does include Facebook, I know. 

Hadn't thought about the script issue, and that is an important one.  Thinking the WP comments with a new theme that takes advantage of nesting is the best bet so far.

BeatingBroke said:

One of the things that I would really like to improve with my site is the commenting system.  It's using the old WP comments that come standard.  There's no threading, and it isn't exactly pretty.  But, I've seen a few sites with facebook comments.  Have any of you used (or tried to use) the facebook comments?  I'm assuming the biggest bonus to using them would be an increased bit of traffic directly on the facebook page, which is good.  But, are there other bonuses to using facebook comments?

Can't you just check "Enable threaded (nested) comments" in Settings/Discussion?  It doesn't address the pretty, but it does cover threading.

I think that's part of the pretty problem in this case.  I do have threading turned on in the settings, but I don't think my current theme uses it.  Part of the pretty-ing process will be a new theme (headway), so maybe I just need to wait and see how it rolls out.

It's a personal privacy thing.  I already have enough trouble with Google tracking.  I don't need another company making money off my info.  This is how scarily good the database are out there.  I don't disclose my company, address, location or any links on my blog or anywhere like Facebook.  Yet, all the databases out there have linked my blog with my home address, cell phone and one of my business locations.  I had to deal with compliance about that issue and it was beyond my control.  

I've seen some sites that have both regular commenting and Facebook comments, but that just complicates things to me...having two different sections for comments.

I've used Disqus, Intense Debate, and Livefyre at various times. Disqus was my favorite by far, but a lot of people told me they had trouble commenting. I'm now using Intense Debate and I've only had one non-specific complaint ("I wish you'd go back to regular WP comments") so I'm sticking with it for now. Since it's made by Auttomatic - same people as WP itself - I figure it must play fairly well with most plugins and such.

One of the things that I would really like to improve with my site is the commenting system.  It's using the old WP comments that come standard.  There's no threading, and it isn't exactly pretty.  But, I've seen a few sites with facebook comments.  Have any of you used (or tried to use) the facebook comments?  I'm assuming the biggest bonus to using them would be an increased bit of traffic directly on the facebook page, which is good.  But, are there other bonuses to using facebook comments?

Can't you just check "Enable threaded (nested) comments" in Settings/Discussion?  It doesn't address the pretty, but it does cover threading.

1) it doesn't even give commenters a nofollow link

2) content is all in a script and cannot be indexed by search engines.  So you don't benefit from having all that extra content that makes your posts more fresh and include more potential keywords.

3) some commenters just aren't on facebook, especially in this niche where some people prefer the anonymous route.  So you'd be missing out on lots of potential commenters.

I do think it's a good idea to somehow setup threaded comments though.  It's frustrating when you can't reply directly below each comment.  Can anyone recommend a good alternative for Beating Broke?  I think mine is built into my theme.