should just be simple. You want a program to do something.. and just that something.. no more no less... but more often than not it comes with more bells, whistles and steaming frilly bits than a gypsy fair on a hot summers day
Plug-ins are like that sometimes... so are some of the Joomla components that are available.. they either do so much yet all I want is a fraction of what's on offer or they are pretty dang close to perfect for my needs... yet somethings still missing.... ahhh life 
I've been using Combomax by Phil Taylor to allow article comments on bee.geek for just a little while... it's an ok component but I had to tweak the template to get the look and feel I was after and you had to register at the site to post a comment or I had to allow guest posting which didn't appeal as you suddenly became extremely vulnerable to bots screaming around all over the place deposting spam in every known and unknown corner of the site...
