Comment by zaheerbaloch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zaheerbaloch | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for amazing suggestions.

For A, there is currently contributions by me and I am trying to get more people in. I just wanted to get some feedback and potentially get some users in the community to get started.

For B, you make a very good point and I have been trying to see how one can best solve this problem. I am thinking of combination of user's lessons shared, likes etc that will give collated contributions. Plus, I am thinking of involving AI later in the stage to vote down contributions that are repeats and keep uniques on the top. But, currently I got no idea about how to do that with AI.

For C, I felt it too. But I was trying hard to get some people to do just that. I think I will try to onboard people more personally now.

Thanks and this has been very helpful.

Follow up question. Do you think its a good idea to gamify this such that you read/share everyday to keep a streak and if you dont share for one day your streak will go back to 0?

To me, there's nothing wrong with adding some fictional accounts to illustrate how you envision the site working and to create vibranancy in hope of attracting more users. It is what Reddit did and if Reddit is a good thing then that's what it took to make that good thing.

I'd put it this way, if faking users makes a better experience for actual users and actual users are your priority then this is a case where the ends ethically justify the means. It might even be the case at this stage that prioritizing a singular representation of yourself on the platform is putting your interests above those of the users. In any event, even if it doesn't work, fictionalizing users moves you out of your comfort zone and that's a good thing to inform your future decisions and projects.

Good luck.

Immediate answer to question is no.

Gamifying something like this ends up with people more likely to put token efforts in order to keep a streak. They'd post simple quotes from the book just to keep the streak for example. That behaviour takes away from the overall experience of the site. Basically it's the wrong kind of behaviour to reward.

This was the reason I kept away from gamifying it. People may not deep read and share better lessons that they learn and instead just keep sharing one liner quotes instead.

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