Sure, it may look less “sexy”, but at the end of the day, Intense Debate was chewing up too many of your comments or sporadically sending them to moderation for no apparent reason. In short, Intense Debate was too intense and too little debate. And I haven’t even mentioned the effect it had on post loading times.

But I am curious. Have I made the right decision in your eyes?

I am also interested in getting your feedback in the comments (!) regarding which commenting features you like, and which features you think would improve the commenting experience even more.

Automattic, the company behind the popular WordPress blog publishing software has acquired blog commenting service Intense Debate.

We’ve covered Intense Debate in the past. The service provides web publishers a replacement for the default comments systems supplied by WordPress, Blogger, and Moveable Type and other blog platforms. By installing the plugin, you get threaded comments, reputations, and other advanced features. And readers can track their own comments and those left by others across any blogs or web sites that use Intense Debate.

Intense Debate will continue to be available for use on blog platforms besides WordPress, but Automattic plans to add some features, like threaded comments to WordPress 2.7, which will be the company’s next major release.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for an account if you haven’t already.

It is really important to me that Israellycool develop more of a community feel. There are blogs with less traffic but way more comments, and when I visit them, I do have a dose of blog envy. Sure, I realize that one reason for the relatively low number of comments is the nature of my posts. The majority are my thoughts on a story, and not in depth or personal posts which are more conducive to attracting feedback. Nevertheless, I believe more of you can comment, even with the current format.

With this in mind, I implore you to sign up for an Intense Debate account, upload your pic or avatar, enter some profile information and start commenting! Become more than an occasional commenter or lurker. Let’s get a real community going.

The top commenter (besides me, of course) will receive a yet-to-be-determined incentive. In fact, heck, I’ll open the floor to you to suggest what that incentive should be. But you’ll have to sign up to Intense Debate first.

In the meantime, I will be looking into other possible enhancements to the site in order to increase the sense of community and reader participation. Again, I invite your comments if you have any suggestions.

Let me know what you think. If I get mostly positive feedback, I’ll keep it. Otherwise, it is back to the old.