Waldi: A quiet place to write, and to be read | Hacker News Reader

Waldi: A quiet place to write, and to be read

github.com

67 pointswaaldev31 comments

At least one interesting concept:

> Your first hundred readers are guaranteed. When you publish, your post is quietly shown to a hundred readers. No followers required, no algorithm to please. Good writing finds its people here.

HN does something similar (although without concrete "at least X viewers"), new comments get some seconds/minutes on the top of the comments, before they slowly "fall down", similar idea I think, surface new things. Makes sense.

I tried to signup, the form basically reported no errors nor success. Tried with just "asdasd" basically instead of semi-real information, then it was successful and asked to confirm my email. Then I went to the GitHub repository, and it says "reading is open to everyone; writing is by invitation", you might want to disable sign ups if you cannot really write anything anyways.

> HN does something similar (…), new comments get some seconds/minutes on the top of the comments

Only kind of. There’s some time/upvotes algorithm that determines that. If a submission has been live for a few hours or a day and already has a number of highly upvoted comments, new ones can appear so far down the list they’ll realistically not get read. Also, some submissions simply don’t get engagement, it not rare to find some with one or two comments, read by effectively no one.

that's a solid bootstrapping strategy until non-English writers starts to join

Hi, I fixed the issue you reported. The signup no longer requires a blog description and name. For now only writing access require an invitation, just to keep the stranger box posts at a minimum quality level. The main benefit of creating an account on Waldi is that you can follow blogs and receive one random stranger post every morning.

I'm a little confused, when I click "or just read" it asks me to create a blog. Is there any way to read the content without creating a blog?

Well, it's probably vibecoded, so who knows what it even does?

I had the same meh reaction. Why put content behind a wall if you're a content distributor platform?

It's not a wall. The blogs have their own subdomain or custom domain and they are public. They are findable by search, the foundation of Internet discovery. But the account creation is for getting random stranger posts every morning to find blogs that you didn't know existed.

It would help a heap to show some blogposts and on the landing page so people would know what they will get when you ask for account even for the readers.

Hey, I found this interesting but after signup I got a single blog post in a language I don't speak, and when I said 'not for me' I got nothing. I think you can get more out of interested sign ups if you let us e.g. check out a few random blogs on signup, to get the momentum rolling.

Perhaps a minimal profile for 'readers' could include a list of languages that would be welcome? That would help with the selection of the daily post.

No one who wants to read, and no one worth reading, is going to go to a site that so clearly doesn't value human expression.

AI-generated prose isn't an obstacle to lots of people, but it absolutely is to the demographic you want to attract.

Hi. I understand your point, but I think there is another side to this. Waldi started within the Persian community. a community where blogging had largely been abandoned in favor of social media since 2016. People really resonated with the serendipity built into the project. Because of that, I believe Waldi can become a home for other communities, too. They might be people whose language I don't speak, but I can still discover them and get to know them through Waldi's randomness.

In this case, AI is just a tool to help translate the original project into English. I do plan on rewriting the GitHub README myself soon. However, I don't think AI is something we must entirely avoid if it ultimately helps people discover and connect with others they might never have reached before.

> AI is just a tool to help translate the original project into English.

1. It seems unlikely that you wrote the original filled with LLM-speak, so this isn't a faithful translation; your tool to help translate has added a lot that will negatively affect the translation's impact

2. Your target readership does not want to communicate with generated text; it's going to give you the exact opposite of connection because they'll respond negatively to it

You're right. I've rewritten the README and the site text.

Needs a language filter. The author I'm shown today is writing in another language, making my views not that meaningful.

Is this based on ATproto ? I personnaly see new silos as something less interesting than ATProto apps.

I don't think so. If you self-host, you're on your own island and anything you write isn't seen unless you attract people to your domain.

Seems like a missed opportunity.

It seem to have rss, though. Perhaps that can help with the curation but at that point it becomes no different than a blog template/framework.

It seems unusually tone deaf to call it a place for writers, and then let AI write the blurb.

Fair point. English isn't my first language and Waldi grew up Persian-first and I leaned on AI to draft the English readme. I will rewrite it soon (and make it shorter too). the Persian is all me. the English version deserves it too.

Tone deaf to have an (excessively verbose) LLM-generated readme for a blog product. Apparently writing a readme is too much to ask even for avid bloggers!

I like the concept of the message in a bottle. motivates me to write again.. But seems it requires an invite code?

Looks cool! After signing up, “today’s stranger” was written is Arabic, so I wasn’t able to read it.

I love the products with some level of randomness inside - I will follow yours.

Great concepts, great execution. A rebellion against the dopamine dealers.

I guess from the title I expected "human written" to be a part of it, though now that I look at it nothing actually guarantees that. The Claudese of the README turned me off on the idea. I like reading something written by people who excel in and relish the craft. Having the README dripping with AI slop sounding words and phrases makes me less confident in the idea that this will be a place that can capture that.

Yeah it just reeks of AI, and thats a turnoff

I would like an invite code for writing, if possible !

How does one get an invite code for this?

How does it improve upon existing blogging platforms? It does not let me access any posts without creating an account. So far, every step seems heavily vibe coded or AI generated.

Account requirement and AI slop are the two exact things I want to avoid in a quiet place.

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