Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

I will definitely use this over ProductHunt. I mean, for crying out loud, I signed up for PH just now to leave a comment and the first thing you get is "commenting is restricted to those users invited by others in the community". Yeah, so I have to supplicate myself to some random Internet stranger and beg permission just to comment on your site? Not happening...

View on HN

I signed up for Product Hunt more than a year ago and still do not have commenting access. My product was submitted by someone and featured even! And I wasn't able to respond or interact with the "community" in any way.

I’m in the first 3k users and still can’t comment. I was able to submit stuff at the beginning but they quickly limited this functionality to some group of users.

I asked someone I knew who already had comment access in the early days (my ID is not lower than yours though) and they shared one of their invites. Each of us from that got 3 comment invites to hand out.

You can tweet at them when your product is on the front page and they'll give you comment access (at least they did for me and a few others I know). But yeah, overall it's crazy that you still can't comment there.

Actually, I did. And they didn't respond nor grant access:

https://twitter.com/statusgator/status/582633562559512576

Ever other maker account I've seen has been a personal account not a company account.

I'm confused -- This is a correct statement! If you disagree, it'd be more productive to provide a counterexample than downvote unknowingly.

(Or examine the maker accounts on the front page of PH...)

I've had the exact same experience. Still cannot comment to this day.

I simply stopped visiting months ago when I realized I was never going to be allowed to participate in the site.

Agreed. This was my same thought. I've been using the site from the first week it launched. I thought it was an awesome concept but the execution is horrible.

The largest problem is that even long time users can't comment. I've requested commenting access for it several times. I feel like I have a lot to contribute to these product discussions and simply can't.

Not much point in visiting a site when you can't contribute yourself and you can't help but wonder how much better the conversations would be if others could comment outside a small inner-club of people.

I plan to use this too. It's weirdly inspiring to see how quickly this came together, how much support its getting, and how the bitter HN community energy can be harnessed towards a constructive solution to a problem.

Thank you for this comment. I'm a member #400 or something and it just seems like there are 'gangs' that run ProductHunt now.

Then (correct me if I'm wrong) they also got funding so... things do not really seem kosher to me.

Product Hunt is a Y Combinator startup - http://valleywag.gawker.com/product-hunt-founder-explains-wh...

So I think that this open platform should prove interesting...

I share the exact same feeling. Signed on PH months ago to drop a comment and never got "approved". I wish comments were public on OpenHunt.co so I can take part in the conversation.

I wish comments were public on OpenHunt.co so I can take part in the conversation.

Yeah, that would be nice. I mean, I can see the value in "direct to the product owner" comments, but some venue for public discussion would also be nice.

You can come here for that

I love these threads thrashing Product Hunt, it is an abortion of nature, elitist, suffocating echo chamber, and a place that clashes with the basics principles of Internet. Sites that started elitist, like Facebook at Harvard, opened to the world audience to empower the platform.

A game I had helped develop made #1 a few weeks back. I wanted to comment on it and say thanks but ran into the same error message. Kind of strange that you have to request permission to comment, even if you have an account.

Restricting commenting was one way they were trying to get more readers.

How would that work? I feel much less inclined to visit a site where only those in the old boy's club get to speak.

It was counterintuitive to me at first, but IIRC the idea was there were too many people talking, and they wanted to have discussion driven by creators, or people with at least some amount of clout that a friend would personally refer them for comment access. It spread in/around our local accelerator here.

There's a podcast episode maybe a year ago with Erik Torenberg (co-founder) where he discusses in more detail. He also talks about focusing the communication by splitting PH into verticals for games, books, etc. as it is now, but at the time it hadn't happened yet.

What you've described as "clout" sounds exactly the same as an old boys club. If account privileges follow a social graph, it's exclusionary to those on the margins by design.

Perhaps my word choice was off. The difference I see is that the original comment invites did not go to one common group.

For instance the person I got mine from is a mid-career technical founder in the midwest who's hard working but not rich or well known. Personally I am not yet a successful founder and have minimal connections in the Bay Area. I attributed getting it to being at the right place at the right time.

that's exactly why I don't use PH. The funny is this product doesn't have public comments too... It only goes to the owner.

I'm onboard as well!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com