Besides writing about various topics for my blogs, I also dabble in a bit of coding, some designing (not the actual work, just the ‘conceptualization’), and plugin-testing. I’ve actually crashed one blog because of my wanton installations of seemingly harmless 3rd-party plugins for WordPress. Lessons learned in the other side of blogging. But… plugins are like a minor addiction. They just make so many cool things happen, don’t they??
So I’ve learned to first watch out for potential disasters when it comes to trying out plugins. And I’ve learned to check first how popular my desired plugins are before I even try using them. One such blog I happen to always pick up nice finds is Jayvee’s abuggedlife.com. And I’ve found another one I immediately liked over there: Postreach.com’s ClickComments.
Notice those cute buttons below each of my posts now? Installed them just before posting this. They provide an indispensable service to people who’re too lazy to leave comments! 
Seriously, I think it’s a great new service that gives both the blogger and the reader a quick and painless feel for the post.
Yeah, painless, ‘coz there’s not a single negative feedback button in the set. Hopefully, in future versions, Postreach.com will allow bloggers to customize the buttons, especially for displaying different kinds of feedback, including not so positive ones.
‘Who wants to receive negative feedback?‘ you might ask. Well, I do. I mean, I’d rather get criticism (as long as it’s constructive) rather than a blank comments section. Right?
UPDATE:
After about a week, I had to deactivate this plugin after all. I noticed it was slowing down page loading. Maybe there’ll be an update — and hopefully by then there’ll be more options.
ANOTHER UPDATE:
OK, it’s up again! When I was at Jayvee’s blog, I noticed that his ClickComments widget’s design had changed. So I went over to the Postreach site and voilà — now they do have negative click-comments. Plus this nifty thumbs-up-thumbs-down thingie. So I guess this plugin’s here to stay for now…
1:04 am on 18 Jul 2007
Hmmm. I hope it won’t discourage people from posting actual comments. I guess it didn’t discourage me hehehe
2:25 am on 18 Jul 2007
See?
IMO, there are two groups of bloggers when it comes to commenting: those who do and those who don’t. I think that this plugin will at least get the non-commenters to take some action if the post does so move them.