Comments Are Fixed (Mostly)
October 25, 2009
Yesterday I mentioned that the comments on this site were broken. For the most part, everything is back to normal using the standard WordPress comments, however all comments posted between October 14 and October 24 appear to have been permanently lost. Most unfortunately, many of these comments were in response to Usury: Three Questions, which was a conversation I very much wanted to continue.
After several unsuccessful attempts to do a “clean import” of the IntenseDebate comments, I decided to disable the plug-in, hoping that the problem might resolve itself. It didn’t.
Fortunately, this problem only impacted twelve comments in all. 
Curiously, these comments were not present in the database backup file that I created on Thursday, October 22—although I recall seeing and responding to these comments (as evidenced by the archive of my individual user comments.
I have not yet decided whether I will re-activate the IntenseDebate plug-in. For the most part I have been satisfied with its performance, although I’ve noticed that sporadically after I “approve” a comment held for moderation, that same comment never appears on the site.
I am open to suggestions, if there are other plug-ins etc. that might enhance the comments here.
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You could give Disqus a try – probably the best alternative to Intense Debate I’ve seen.
I see in your previous post that you hadn’t upgraded before noticing the problem. If I may ask, which version where you before the upgrade? If you were anything below 2.8.3 then it’s possible you were hacked.
As for IDC being broken, you can always send support a call and they generally try to help.
db0, I think I was certainly below 2.8.3 before the upgrade. The problem manifested itself (somewhat) before the update. After the update, I’ve been unable to sync back to IDC.
I’m going to try it again, having given a few days off. If that doesn’t work I’ll place a comment in to support.
The syncing issue might have been caused by the worm.
Check this post out and investigate if you have any traces of the hack. If you do, you may have to do a full wipe-reinstall, including the DB. Instructions in the same post.
I was hacked with that base_64 sh(t about a year ago, but we did the full wipe-reinstall including DB in November if I recall. I’m waiting to hear from the IDC people – thanks again!