Comment by ChrisNorstrom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChrisNorstrom | Hacker News Reader

Oh, you know what's bothering me?

Whenever others submit "Show HN" stories they get upvoted to the front page and I give them feedback, sometimes spending 30 minutes on helping them fix some of their design problems. But when I submit my "Show HN" site, which I've tried 3 times now, it never makes it anywhere and I don't get feedback. So I give and I don't get anything back.

I put in more than I get out. When this happens I leave the community permanently and never look back. I'm thinking of leaving HN. This will be the 4th time I'm leaving a community because I'm putting in more than what I'm getting out of it. HN has turned into TechCrunch, a place for nothing but tech news so wanna be entrepreneurs that don't do anything but dick around on the internet can read about other people's tech success and live in someone else's glory.

How the hell does the "Facebook Acquires Instagram" story help any of us? How has that information enriched your life or helped you create something? We're suppose to be a community that helps each other out, because startups and websites are hard, and occasionally talk about some tech news. Now it's just tech news 24/7.

I've got a few more Show HN submitions, if those don't go anywhere I'm out.

Edit: Here's what I wanted to show. Thanks for your guy's support. http://www.timeforzen.com

I think getting on the frontpage (and getting good feedback) takes a bit of luck. Time of the day/etc. Try and get your submission in /newest before the East Coast gets to work... then you'll be on there for an hour+ and people will have a chance to see and upvote your submission. Try pinging #startups @ irc.freenode.net and let people know you are showing off something you've been working on. I find people who hang out there are usually pretty helpful and might give you an upvote.

It takes a lot for me NOT to upvote a "Show HN" post. If it's a genuine/not spammy I'll upvote it even if I'm not interested it the project itself just so it will get seen by people who are.

I'll be glad to take a look at any of your projects. Post links here or email me.

I also got the very un-Zen-like message about Flash being needed. The page blanked out after that and I'm not sure why. Next load was fine and I had no problems playing audio -- did not change any configuration. Flash is enabled, by the way.

After this I was a little hesitant to click on a link that read "enable-javascript.com", thinking it was another mistake. You should replace those links via JavaScript if it is enabled to avoid misleading your visitors. I did click though, and as I said, playback functioned fine.

The pictures are beautiful and well-presented. The names are evocative and well-matched to the pictures. Well done on the design. Good idea, have some doubts about conversion rate but that's your deal to figure out.

Not everything needs to be with DOM windows - I wouldn't mind clicking though to another page to see the "About."

Agreed. I have submitted some Show HN's and they never get upvoted. I see other Show HN's that are just crummy landing pages. I don't get it. I spend a lot of time working on my projects and try to make something at least some people find useful. It's at least more useful than a landing page. But nope.

Also I think sometimes it depends quite a lot on how you word your post.

It's quite tempting to think - "I spent a lot of time on this, it speaks for itself" where as you need to pique the interest of the crowd.

Even go as so far to give a run down of how and why you built it and what you learned! We're suckers for a great backstory and a few data points.

Just looked at your timeforzen project and think it's great. Sorry it didn't get as much attention as you'd like, but one thing that HN can help you learn is how to pitch. You'll run into the same issues in the market, only it's more difficult to get traction and it brings heavier implications (not growing revenue). Use HN as a lab to learn ways to get attention. Figure out which hooks work best.

Meanwhile, I'd be disappointed if HN didn't provide good discussion/insight on the FB acquisition. This is the only community where I could tolerate the discussion. Elsewhere it's just soundbites repeated from news clips. Most often, I click the comments link before the story link. That's why I like HN and won't be going anywhere.

I checked out timeforzen.com. I don't want to unblock flash so that audio can play. The message suggesting I do that sounds a bit snarky too.

Hey Chris,

What are the links? I'll be happy to give feedback.Shoot me a mail if you like!

Here's one... give it an upvote... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3858109

Nice! You should do a blog post explaining how you built it. That's what HN loves the most!

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