This topic started with the idea that a Discourse powered comment system could provide similar functionality to Coral, with the added benefit of allowing website comments to branch off into regular Discourse topics. Discourse is providing the ability to moderate a website’s comments and allowing discussions related to the comments to occur on the forum.
I don’t think the need for moderation needs to be argued for.
The need for allowing comments to branch off into actual Discourse topics might be less obvious. I’m working from the assumption that having any sort of online conversation is difficult - in-person conversation provides all sorts of subtle cues that don’t exist online. Having meaningful online conversations with more than a handful of people is next to impossible. That’s where Discourse comes in. Discourse’s group functionality provides the ability to limit who can participate in a topic. Groups of commenters can be allowed to participate in walled-off Discourse topics. This is kind of the opposite to how the fediverse works.
That said, I’m curious about how Discourse/WordPress fediverse integration could work. For example, if Sally comments on Bob’s WordPress post, what would be expected to happen to Sally’s comment if she had a Discourse account? What could be expected to happen to Sally’s comment if she didn’t have a Discourse account? Is there any way that Sally could opt out of having her comment published to the fediverse?
Getting off topic, but with the various online-harms types of bills that are being implemented or proposed in western countries, if Sally’s comment is deemed to be offensive, who is responsible for publishing it? I’m assuming that’s an unanswerable question at this point.