Hacker News Reader

> People need to be 100% sure that when they donate money to "running costs", it would not end up being used for something else like your new iPhone or a vacation in Mexico.

So what if it does? Yes, if you explicitly say that all donations will be used for site maintenance, then maybe. But even that could include labor?

In any case, the point is moot. Very, very, very few open source projects take in enough donations from the general public to pay for a new iPhone. Most are very lucky to get $100-$200 in a year.

The credit thing is my only real concern here.

As far as I'm concern, upvoting/downvoting isn't fun, it's an act of public service. I'd be incredibly concerned that corporate entities will have huge incentive to buy fact-upvotes and since there is no limit how many they can use, it would take 5,000 good samaritans to undo the damage of 1-shill with $5.

Basically a deal-breaker to me that the site is that out-of-touch with the problem of internet news. Frankly, I'd like a news site that does the opposite - 1 vote per proven US citizen (no bots, no foreign influencers, no corporations).

It seems like the bulk of your concern is about the voting specifically. I'm curious if the voting aspect of the credit system were removed and voting worked more like it does on Reddit/HN (one vote per user), but the other aspects of it were left intact would that alleviate most of your concerns?

Specifically, it would still cost credits to leave comments, submit stories and facts, but not to vote.

I mean, I don't imagine I'd "pay" to leave comments, submit stories, or facts.

Maybe I'm an odd-breed but I see HN as a charitable place for those in the know to contribute to the pool of public knowledge.

I think the best version of HN (or equivalent) is full of people with that objective (e.g. wikipedia). The worst version is full of people grinding emotional axes (4chan) or self-promoting.

I think you'll find the people who are self-promoting (e.g. trying to start a new cryptocurrency, or a PR firm) will have much more resources to submit articles than good-samaritans.

The thing I do like is breaking an article into a list of cited facts. I like the brevity, and I like sources.

>The UI is unappealing. I would prefer the default theme to be dark.

I made a stylesheet to fix a few of the glaring UI problems, as well as a sheet for dark mode: https://github.com/rovyko/hoxly-gui-patch-stylesheets

    * Horizontally align news item titles
    * New Items take up full margined-page width
    * Search input at the top of the page
    * All facts button has a pointer cursor
    * Increase button text size

Thanks for taking the time to do this. Frontend dev is really not my thing. I'll see if I can integrate some of these changes.

> People need to be 100% sure that when they donate money to "running costs", it would not end up being used for something else like your new iPhone or a vacation in Mexico.

You may be right, but I wonder how many of those people would be ok with their employer saying "we're willing to cover living costs, but your recent trip shows we're paying you too much. We value the work and service you provide us, but we'd prefer to only pay the bare minimum that it takes to maintain that service. By all means, buy food for yourself, and a bed is ok, maybe a modest television, but a trip is right out."

> I would prefer the default theme to be dark.

I would not. Now we're cancelled out.

I also don't want a dark theme.

Likewise. Of all the things to complain about, this is not an important one.

Thanks for the feedback!

> 1. The UI is unappealing. I would prefer the default theme to be dark.

I'll see if I can add an optional dark mode.

> 2. Site layout resembles generic link aggregating sites with no real content, which discourages the viewer from exploring the site further.

I'm not really sure what changes could be made that would encourage users to explore. Could you elaborate?

> 3. The boxes with numbers stand out too much among the other content. Thanks to the fact that they take various amount of space depending on the number's length, it causes the entire list of articles to appear unaligned.

Yeah, this is a problem. I think maybe it can be partially solved by abbreviating 3,000 as 3k, etc.

> 4. I was not able to find a link from the main website to the credits link you have posted. Also, it is unclear how much the credits cost. The purchase page is only available once you register and log in. In my opinion that is not transparent at all.

Okay, this is something I hadn't even considered. Originally the entire credits pack actually required authentication to view but I changed that last minute. I'll see what I can do to make the pricing more transparent.

> In my opinion, the most reasonable way to cover your website's running costs is to ask for donations.

I have run websites in the past on the donation model. In my experience it hits a wall once you have more general web surfers on your site than power users. Reddit tried the donation model with a transparent meter that showed the sites costs each day but it eventually had to pivot to ads.

what changes could be made that would encourage users to explore

Microcontent, context.

News sites (though not HN) typically categorise stories topinally: local, regional, world (often forthrr by region), events, disasters, crime, politics, business, labour, science, technology, sport, culture, entertainment, health, real estate, transport, style (with varying overlap).

Jacob Nielsen on microcontent. I'd prefer a brief lede 'graf, say, 10-20 words (about a tweet), well chosen for framing item(s).

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/microcontent-how-to-write-h...

The boxes with numbers

Change the colour or remove it entirely.

A dark mode would definitely be nice, but I think there are some larger UI improvements that can be done. Some basic ones would be better padding and spacing for legibility, and making use of the large empty spaces for additional content. And being able to see the number of comments a post has without clicking on it is a must.

I really like this project and the credits system in place. If you're open to the idea I'd be down to collaborate on some of the frontend / design work. Feel free to message me.

> If you're open to the idea I'd be down to collaborate on some of the frontend / design work. Feel free to message me.

Sure, I'd like to hear more if you had some ideas. It doesn't look like your profile has any contact info, but you can email me: contact@kylepiira.com

> I'm not really sure what changes could be made that would encourage users to explore. Could you elaborate?

Any good site needs to get the visitors' attention from the first moments after they open it. I do not mean to steal the users' attention by showing forms to agree with or blinking elements. I mean showing the most useful content, carefully organized so that it is simple and natural to work with.

Currently, hoxly news site looks like n-th iteration of a typical corporation site with content blocks in the middle replaced with a modified HN-style list of links. There is the top bar, some account-related stuff in the top right corner, the about and policy links at the bottom. Nothing really new, no interesting design elements.

To most visitors, such a site appears like they have already seen it and they may wonder what makes this one stand out. The content, obviously, could be the answer. But with the current generic look, some people may think that it is yet another link aggregation site which aims to artificially boost its PageRank score and simply leave.

I do not have any exact ideas for improvement, but in my opinion, the site should have a more unique look and be more practical to use. The main areas I would focus on are:

1. Bad usage of space. At a normal zoom level, on a typical 16:9 screen, the actual news content is restricted to a column whose width is about ~30% of the available display width. The rest is blank. When I zoom in so that almost all of the display width is utilized, then I see only ~7 news items with overly large font. In other words, there is no way to properly resize the website so that all the space is used efficiently.

I would change that e.g. by moving the top bar to the side or making it hidden until the mouse is moved near its edge. Also, I would use at least two column layout on wide screens.

2. The offered features (timestamp, user, upvotes, comments, etc.) are difficult to recognize for a new visitor, because they do not stand out. It is not clear that those phrases under the news items have some interesting meaning and that some of them are clickable. I would say that many first time visitors would simply overlook them.

3. As was already mentioned, it would help to provide even more information about the particular news item on the main page, so that visitors could decide with more confidence about whether it would be interesting to them or not. A link to the article from which most of the facts are taken, for instance, could be useful.

+1 to everything you said. I can see the features of this site supporting a quick view into stuff that's going on, but the design needs a lot of work.

One thing I wish: I don't want to go to a separate page to see the few facts, especially for the top stories.

I'll see if I can add a button to show the first few facts without leaving the list pages.

Alright, I've updated the site. Each story now has a "facts" link that will expand the top 5 facts without leaving the page.

That’s a great improvement! Thanks

There's a reason that essentially zero websites default to a dark theme.

I may be in the extreme end, but in the rare occasion that I find a dark website, if I can't run it through a browser extension to make it light and readable: I leave and never return.

> There's a reason that essentially zero websites default to a dark theme.

Yes, it seems like there is. I am wondering what that reason may be.

My preference for dark themes is based on my current typical viewing conditions, which are rooms with low to medium light levels where the brightness of my screen is also low. In such a situation, I do not wish to look at white-themed content because it is uncomfortably bright. In a place with a lot of light, I would not mind the light theme, but it still would not be my preference because of the established habit. With the sun shining directly into the screen, it may even be impossible to use the dark theme, but that is an edge case which, in my opinion, should not affect how a website looks by default.

I assume that many theme-related preferences are habit-based. In my opinion, a reasonable UI design should at least allow simple switching between dark and light themes.