It seems that many unfortunately take "constructive criticism" to be only delusion-inducing back patting: People get their panties in the bunch around here when people have anything but unadulterated praise for various Show HN projects.
Dare to point out that restricting your project to Facebook logins might restrict usage and boy do some get the vapours, and a dozen hysterical "I remember back when HN wasn't so mean" blog posts start getting authored.
There is always a danger in being involved in an echo-chamber. As Groucho Marx so famously said "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". If you seek out and insulate yourself from broader criticism, the result is very unlikely to be useful.
I plan on posting a Show HN in the coming weeks, and my greatest hope is that it will be torn to pieces. I'm enough of an adult to categorize and prioritize the criticism.
Looks like the emberjs tutorial got seeded with some articles and comments.
You might consider loading your scripts after the base html is rendered so the initial page-load isn't 2-5 seconds of nothingness.
Seems like the content div is blank as a default, you might consider placing the most popular or trending article there by default as you are loading it anyway.
I would recommend loading titles and thumbnails first, rendering and having comments load in the background so the initial load time is lessened further, unless you are side-loading comments for another reason.
Also, you can only sign up with twitter/github connect?
I was thinking of working on something similar and was debating an iFrame. I was worried it would mess up people's readability plugins (especially important for mobile devices). Also not sure what the ethics of iFraming other people's work is.
Seconded. Especially because the "quality content with a focus on technology, startups and frankly anything that appeals to the inquisitive mind" is pretty close to what that Monocle is doing :)
The application looks good with interesting articles at the time of writing.
As a note though, I opened the link because I thought it was related to Monocle magazine (http://monocle.com/) which also provides high quality content (albeit not community-sourced). Maybe reviewing the name is in order?
As a reader of Monocle, I thought the same. Being that they both play in the publishing content world, I'd think Monocle the magazine would come down on the OP legally. Aside from all that, I'm eager to check it out.
High five to my fellow Monocle readers (subscribers?) ;-) Just as a FWIW, I'd totally love a Hacker News-style site for Monocle-esque topics (i.e. the blend of culture, design, business)..
Nice minimal design. I like the ability to read a summary before deciding to click through. I was confused at first when the main content frame was empty (like another commenter pointed out - maybe put something there on page load).
I don't understand how using your Twitter handle will elevate the level of discourse. Twitter itself is full of trolls. Also, you can create anonymous Twitter accounts that don't use your real name, so accountability goes out the window too.
For what its worth, it looks like a modern tech discussion forum built using modern tools. Nothing wrong with that, but that's how it should be branded. The feel good aspect without any real technical backend to enable it falls a bit flat.
Interesting idea, but I wonder if "niceness" is really that important when sharing ideas that may or may not be controversial. Being professional and constructive might be a good goal, but these don't necessarily entail "niceness." That is, you can still be professional and constructive while being a giant asshole.
Also, I'm not really sure making people accountable by making them use Real Names or whatever account tied to their real name will make them be nicer. It might seem like that because on social networks, you can selectively add people to talk to that you enjoy being nice to. When it is an open forum, the discussion might still turn sour because people have contradicting viewpoints and that's okay, especially in a technical discussion. Finally, tying people to their real names by default sounds like it lends itself to all kinds of Internet Detective-y stuff which will probably lead to more Ad Hominem attacks than discussion.
Source: I post on Something Awful where we can still have useful discussion and call each other out on our bullshit. Niceness isn't as important as the free discussion of ideas.
To me, Reddit has done a great job of letting me think of it as the kind of place that suits my style of discussion. I hear stories about the atrocity exhibition in this-or-that group of subreddits but never encounter it personally.
> Social accountability is provided by linking your Twitter or GitHub accounts
I never understood the reasoning behind this kind of social login. If you're dead set on being an ass, then you'll be one regardless, even if it takes creating a burner Twitter or GH account. Anything short of demanding proof of identity and linking your real name is useless (and now you have two problems.) All this achieves is forcing people to sign up to another service in order to use your own. A low barrier to entry with community moderation is enough to keep the value of the comments high, while keeping noise to a minimum.
There is actually evidence as far as I remember which indicates that people using for Facebook commenting system behaves nicer because others can identify them.
Is the offline version of this strategy efficient? By that I mean if we're standing in a room together are you less likely to be an asshole to me than when you're behind a keyboard?
This method is simply trying to replicate the offline version of the experience by adding a face to the name. I'm not saying it's the perfect solution, but it's probably a step in the right direction.
The offline version of this is requiring everyone to wear a "Hello my name is __________" sticker but not actually checking that they put their real name on it.
I don't understand your reasoning. People who are genuinely dead set on being an ass will be an ass, period. Like you said, adding friction can improve things (you mentioned requiring proof of identity) even if the friction can still be subverted (IDs can be faked). The fact remains that adding any sort of friction should be expected to cut down the number of asses, so I don't see why requiring authentication via a service that's generally not anonymous (Twitter or GitHub) is a bad idea.
> Like you said, adding friction can improve things (you mentioned requiring proof of identity)
I said adding proof of a real identity would have some impact, but it would create more problems than it solved, thus it would not improve things.
> The fact remains that adding any sort of friction should be expected to cut down the number of asses
It should also be expected to cut down on the number of users. My argument is that if your objective is to improve the quality of the comments there are more effective ways of doing it, like effective moderation schemes.
> I don't see why requiring authentication via a service that's generally not anonymous (Twitter or GitHub) is a bad idea
Because it's not effective. It raises the barrier to entry, excluding several users who would add value to discussions, without providing any meaningful level of protection. Also, neither of them, as far as I am aware, enforces a real name policy, so I'm not sure what you mean by them being "generally not anonymous."
> It should also be expected to cut down on the number of users.
Of course it would. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to reduce the portion of asses in a community at the cost of also reducing the number of quality users. This applies to your last paragraph as well. In this case, for a tech- or startup-leaning community, I think Twitter and GitHub accounts target a huge portion of all appropriate users, and I think it could very well be effective despite it excluding valuable users who don't have or don't wish to use accounts from either service.
As for moderation, it can obviously be an effective tool. But I don't think it's a cure-all feature or even the most fundamentally important feature of a successful community. I have probably seen more online communities negatively impacted by moderators than by users (I would say that holds for Hacker News).
Granted, the "quality" of an online community is inherently subjective, so communities I find problems with might serve a large portion of their users very well. At the end of the day, the people who dislike a community enough to leave will leave, and that improves both the community and those people's lives. That is the fundamental "self-moderation" of online communities.
I never understood the reasoning behind this kind of social login. [...] All this achieves is forcing people to sign up to another service in order to use your own.
Well, no, there is another possibility. Someone who doesn't already have an account on one of those other services might simply not use yours at all either.
I know plenty of intelligent, interesting, civil people in real life, and many of them contribute to one on-line forum or another. I know plenty of people who develop software, both personally and professionally. I literally can't think of anyone I know in real life who actually has an active GitHub account, though, and I only know a handful who use Twitter. Maybe it's a local thing and using these services is more common in other places.
My friends and I have wanted a personal version of something like this for a while. We have several Facebook groups where we share links/ideas and comment on them but would like to move away from Facebook.
I just tried out Potluck and it feels like the whole goal of it is to suck in your graph. It has zero content or usability until you do that. I suspect that even after you add your graph, if none of your friends are using it, it will continue to have zero content. Seems kind of the opposite of what Monocle is trying to do.
Am I the only one who don't like this new trend when every second website now is designed with the low contrast and native OS antialiasing disabled? I'm 24 and I just can't read the summaries on this site. Just compare the two versions on this screenshot [1]: default on the top, and native antialiasing on the bottom with the slightly darker text (#67707c)
I hope this comment is seen as observational rather than the sort of blind criticism that Monocle dreams to avoid.
The article discusses the design and performance of Monocle, which are definitely pleasant.
However, the aspects of the community seem more like wishes than anything encouraged by Monocle (except for the Twitter/Github links) nor seemingly present.
Monocle is more interesting (though less ambitious) than Atwood's Discourse, but similarly misses the difference between community and charm, and performance and design.
This is super slick, once loaded.
I haven't tried commenting or posting, but as a reader, I'm pleased.
My only criticism atm would be seeing a completely blank page with NoScript on.
At my default browser size I can see 8 items on Monocle at a glance and 21 on Hacker News. I'd suggest, at least, reducing the size of the information about the submitter, number of points, etc. When scanning HN I very rarely look at those.
I don't find avatars add to the conversation mostly because I don't first look to see who said something. If I read something interesting I might look to see who wrote it.
I'm not sure what the thumbnail graphics from the article are adding.
One thing I like about HN is the choice I make between reading the comments and reading the article with no framing.
Excessive attention to identity can really destroy a discussion site. There are communities where I know everyone, but knowing the topic being discussed I already know what each and every person is going to say. Zero information content there.
That's an interesting thing, though--it makes me less likely to post from HN on a mobile device, and thus I'm more likely to be thinking in a useful manner and making thoughtful criticisms.
189 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 233 ms ] threadTo give this comment some context.
Dare to point out that restricting your project to Facebook logins might restrict usage and boy do some get the vapours, and a dozen hysterical "I remember back when HN wasn't so mean" blog posts start getting authored.
There is always a danger in being involved in an echo-chamber. As Groucho Marx so famously said "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". If you seek out and insulate yourself from broader criticism, the result is very unlikely to be useful.
I plan on posting a Show HN in the coming weeks, and my greatest hope is that it will be torn to pieces. I'm enough of an adult to categorize and prioritize the criticism.
You might consider loading your scripts after the base html is rendered so the initial page-load isn't 2-5 seconds of nothingness.
Seems like the content div is blank as a default, you might consider placing the most popular or trending article there by default as you are loading it anyway.
I would recommend loading titles and thumbnails first, rendering and having comments load in the background so the initial load time is lessened further, unless you are side-loading comments for another reason.
Also, you can only sign up with twitter/github connect?
God, it's so negative here.
I hope the following posts will detail how the community is managed - not the back- or front-end.
Edit: A link to Monocle the magazine: https://monocle.com/
As a note though, I opened the link because I thought it was related to Monocle magazine (http://monocle.com/) which also provides high quality content (albeit not community-sourced). Maybe reviewing the name is in order?
Edit: phrasing
One bug, the summaries are missing apostrophes.
For what its worth, it looks like a modern tech discussion forum built using modern tools. Nothing wrong with that, but that's how it should be branded. The feel good aspect without any real technical backend to enable it falls a bit flat.
Also, I'm not really sure making people accountable by making them use Real Names or whatever account tied to their real name will make them be nicer. It might seem like that because on social networks, you can selectively add people to talk to that you enjoy being nice to. When it is an open forum, the discussion might still turn sour because people have contradicting viewpoints and that's okay, especially in a technical discussion. Finally, tying people to their real names by default sounds like it lends itself to all kinds of Internet Detective-y stuff which will probably lead to more Ad Hominem attacks than discussion.
Source: I post on Something Awful where we can still have useful discussion and call each other out on our bullshit. Niceness isn't as important as the free discussion of ideas.
I never understood the reasoning behind this kind of social login. If you're dead set on being an ass, then you'll be one regardless, even if it takes creating a burner Twitter or GH account. Anything short of demanding proof of identity and linking your real name is useless (and now you have two problems.) All this achieves is forcing people to sign up to another service in order to use your own. A low barrier to entry with community moderation is enough to keep the value of the comments high, while keeping noise to a minimum.
A quick google turned up an article on TC about contrary evidence however. http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-...
Real Name policies are obviously valuable in an advertising deck... I'm skeptical on whether the benefits translate to users.
The purpose is to influence people who exist on the spectrum somewhere between angelic and dead set on being an ass.
This method is simply trying to replicate the offline version of the experience by adding a face to the name. I'm not saying it's the perfect solution, but it's probably a step in the right direction.
I said adding proof of a real identity would have some impact, but it would create more problems than it solved, thus it would not improve things.
> The fact remains that adding any sort of friction should be expected to cut down the number of asses
It should also be expected to cut down on the number of users. My argument is that if your objective is to improve the quality of the comments there are more effective ways of doing it, like effective moderation schemes.
> I don't see why requiring authentication via a service that's generally not anonymous (Twitter or GitHub) is a bad idea
Because it's not effective. It raises the barrier to entry, excluding several users who would add value to discussions, without providing any meaningful level of protection. Also, neither of them, as far as I am aware, enforces a real name policy, so I'm not sure what you mean by them being "generally not anonymous."
Of course it would. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to reduce the portion of asses in a community at the cost of also reducing the number of quality users. This applies to your last paragraph as well. In this case, for a tech- or startup-leaning community, I think Twitter and GitHub accounts target a huge portion of all appropriate users, and I think it could very well be effective despite it excluding valuable users who don't have or don't wish to use accounts from either service.
As for moderation, it can obviously be an effective tool. But I don't think it's a cure-all feature or even the most fundamentally important feature of a successful community. I have probably seen more online communities negatively impacted by moderators than by users (I would say that holds for Hacker News).
Granted, the "quality" of an online community is inherently subjective, so communities I find problems with might serve a large portion of their users very well. At the end of the day, the people who dislike a community enough to leave will leave, and that improves both the community and those people's lives. That is the fundamental "self-moderation" of online communities.
Well, no, there is another possibility. Someone who doesn't already have an account on one of those other services might simply not use yours at all either.
I know plenty of intelligent, interesting, civil people in real life, and many of them contribute to one on-line forum or another. I know plenty of people who develop software, both personally and professionally. I literally can't think of anyone I know in real life who actually has an active GitHub account, though, and I only know a handful who use Twitter. Maybe it's a local thing and using these services is more common in other places.
Does anyone know of any service that offers this?
There's rarely much of a reason to overthink it - many people do, however, and even create start-up as a result!
Go with what's been tested properly and proven to work to a decent degree.
1.http://monosnap.com/image/OgCT8YKqEoHTAxAmgofKDxDNb.png
The article discusses the design and performance of Monocle, which are definitely pleasant. However, the aspects of the community seem more like wishes than anything encouraged by Monocle (except for the Twitter/Github links) nor seemingly present.
Monocle is more interesting (though less ambitious) than Atwood's Discourse, but similarly misses the difference between community and charm, and performance and design.
I don't find avatars add to the conversation mostly because I don't first look to see who said something. If I read something interesting I might look to see who wrote it.
I'm not sure what the thumbnail graphics from the article are adding.
One thing I like about HN is the choice I make between reading the comments and reading the article with no framing.