Web Product Guidelines (Leah Culver) | Hacker News Reader

Web Product Guidelines (Leah Culver)

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23 pointsraghus16 comments

Hey hn. Sorry that it's vague. I'll take the time to fill in the details if A List Apart ever comes calling. Otherwise, I'm too lazy to blog, hence you could call it "an exercise for the reader."

use it yourself, "eat your own dogfood" or however you would like to describe it. That's the most important one for me. If you're not using it to solve your own problems then what are you building it for?

Also, if you're interested in what I've been working on lately, check out baconfile.com (web interface for sharing files via Amazon S3) and leafychat.com (web IRC client).

Leafy Chat looks really neat. The design is a significant improvement over mibbit.

I agree about the design. Unfortunately though, the client connects to freenode as <username>@baconfile.com. Not something freenode is too kind toward, considering the mibbit fiasco.

We're working on a fix for that right now. Freenode has been incredibly patient with us which is cool (thanks!).

Some more context is necessary on some of those items. But it's a neat list of thoughts anyway.

This is ridiculous. 19 lines of mediocre catchphrases, half of which don't even make sense: "8 - don't wanker in technology". OK, I won't "wanker in technology".

Even if Ms Culver is some kind of mini-celebrity in the startup community - and honestly I had to look her up - I don't think she deserves a free pass with no-effort garbage like this. And when I saw it, it's #2 on HN. Really? This?

Flagged for "does not deserve to be on the front page".

Note that she didn't submit this.

And also note the companion blog post: http://leahculver.com/2009/07/14/web-product-guildelines/

"I’ve been keeping a gist of web product guidelines for myself. It’s pretty much a list of stuff I tell entrepreneurs when they asked me what I’ve learned from Pownce (from a product point of view) and also what I try to remind myself when working on new projects. I thought I’d re-post them here for fun. If I’m missing anything, be sure to comment."

How could anyway be expected to find that companion blog post? If writing lists of "Motivations"-poster style truisms helps her keep her goals in mind, then great, but the resulting product is of little value to others.

Anyway I've already made way too much of a fuss over this. I just wanted someone to make the point - this submission, as submitted, is garbage, and the only reason it's been voted up is because it's by a kinda-cute girl. That is not the meritocracy I hope for in a place like HN.

"Don't wanker in technology" just means not to get too caught up in background technology at the expense of your end users and end product.

For example, instead of switching to a trendy key-value store (or developing their own), FriendFeed has done some incredible database stuff on top of MySQL. It was the right solution for them (even if it is less cool) and it helped scale their architecture quickly.

Just fwiw, "wanker" has a well-established meaning, and it's not this.

Edit, for a bit more explanation: Would you say "don't asshole in technology", or "don't cocksucker in technology"? Because those phrases mean roughly the same thing, and make as much sense.

Well why didn't you say that then? If you have to explain what you meant, you didn't communicate it properly the first time. And "wanker" is not a verb.

Agreed that FF have done very well.

(edited to remove "helpful hints" which, on further reflection, came across badly)

see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=711031

Well sorry to be so blunt, but if it's "vague", has a need to "fill in the details", and has been left as an "exercise to the reader" - then I do not want to see it, no matter who it's from.

Sweet. I can fork this.

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