+>> likely to include "others can't put words into my mouth".
+>>
+>> My other objection to using a namespace is that I'm not particularly happy about
+>> plugins consuming arbitrary pieces of the wiki namespace - /discussion is bad
+>> enough already. Indeed, this very page would accidentally get matched by rules
+>> aiming to control comment-posting... :-) --[[smcv]]
+
+>> Thinking about it, perhaps one way to address this would be to have the suffix
+>> (e.g. whether commenting on Sandbox creates sandbox/comment1 or sandbox/c1 or
+>> what) be configurable by the wiki admin, in the same way that recentchanges has
+>> recentchangespage => 'recentchanges'? I'd like to see fewer hard-coded page
+>> names in general, really - it seems odd to me that shortcuts and smileys
+>> hard-code the name of the page to look at. Perhaps I could add
+>> discussionpage => 'discussion' too? --[[smcv]]
+
+>> (I've now implemented this in my branch. --[[smcv]])
+
+>> The best reason to keep the pages internal seems to me to be that you
+>> don't want the overhead of every comment spawning its own wiki page.
+>> The worst problem with it though is that you have to assume the pages
+>> are mdwn (or `default_pageext`) and not support other formats. --[[Joey]]
+
+>> Well, you could always have `comment1._mdwn`, `comment2._creole` etc. and
+>> alter the htmlize logic so that the `mdwn` hook is called for both `mdwn`
+>> and `_mdwn` (assuming this is not already the case). I'm not convinced
+>> that multi-format comments are a killer feature, though - part of the point
+>> of this plugin, in my mind, is that it's less flexible than the full power
+>> of ikiwiki and gives users fewer options. This could be construed
+>> to be a feature, for people who don't care how flexible the technology is
+>> and just want a simple way to leave a comment. The FormattingHelp page
+>> assumes you're writing 100% Markdown in any case...
+>>
+>> Internal pages do too many things, perhaps: they suppress generation of
+>> HTML pages, they disable editing over the web, and they have a different
+>> namespace of htmlize hooks. I think the first two of those are useful
+>> for this plugin, and the last is harmless; you seem to think the first
+>> is useful, and the other two are harmful. --[[smcv]]
+
+>> By the way, I think that who can post comments should be controllable by
+>> the existing plugins opendiscussion, anonok, signinedit, and lockedit. Allowing
+>> posting comments w/o any login, while a nice capability, can lead to
+>> spam problems. So, use `check_canedit` as at least a first-level check?
+>> --[[Joey]]
+
+>> This plugin already uses `check_canedit`, but that function doesn't have a concept
+>> of different actions. The hack I use is that when a user comments on, say, sandbox,
+>> I call `check_canedit` for the pseudo-page "sandbox[postcomment]". The
+>> special `postcomment(glob)` [[ikiwiki/pagespec]] returns true if the page ends with
+>> "[postcomment]" and the part before (e.g. sandbox) matches the glob. So, you can
+>> have postcomment(blog/*) or something. (Perhaps instead of taking a glob, postcomment
+>> should take a pagespec, so you can have postcomment(link(tags/commentable))?)
+>>
+>> This is why `anonok_pages => 'postcomment(*)'` and `locked_pages => '!postcomment(*)'`
+>> are necessary to allow anonymous and logged-in editing (respectively).
+>>
+>> This is ugly - one alternative would be to add `check_permission()` that takes a
+>> page and a verb (create, edit, rename, remove and maybe comment are the ones I
+>> can think of so far), use that, and port the plugins you mentioned to use that
+>> API too. This plugin could either call `check_can("$page/comment1", 'create')` or
+>> call `check_can($page, 'comment')`.
+>>
+>> One odd effect of the code structure I've used is that we check for the ability to
+>> create the page before we actually know what page name we're going to use - when
+>> posting the comment I just increment a number until I reach an unused one - so
+>> either the code needs restructuring, or the permission check for 'create' would
+>> always be for 'comment1' and never 'comment123'. --[[smcv]]
+
+>> Another possibility is to just check for permission to edit (e.g.) `sandbox/comment1`.
+>> However, this makes the "comments can only be created, not edited" feature completely
+>> reliant on the fact that internal pages can't be edited. Perhaps there should be a
+>> `editable_pages` pagespec, defaulting to `'*'`?
+
+When using this plugin, you should also enable [[htmlscrubber]] and either [[htmltidy]]
+or [[htmlbalance]]. Directives are filtered out by default, to avoid commenters slowing
+down the wiki by causing time-consuming processing. As long as the recommended plugins
+are enabled, comment authorship should hopefully be unforgeable by CGI users.