Review my project – Interestin | Hacker News Reader

Review my project – Interestin

blog.interestin.co

33 pointstalhof837 comments

As an aside, it honestly confuses me why the vast majority of company blogs don't have an actual link to their home page, but instead prefer to have the header link to their blog subdomain.

This is a huge pet peeve of mine, but at least in this case there is a link to the actual home page in the first sentence of the blog post.

The real problem, which happens shockingly often, is when a blog post doesn't obviously link to the main site anywhere -- or otherwise buries the link deep into the post -- and neither does the blog.

I think it's probably not done consciously but rather an oversight, by leaving the original blog's default code

1. The first part makes me think you're solving the problem of "long form" comments -- providing better tools for writing in depth responses to things. On more careful reading it sounds like you're not doing that. I left unsure of what the project really is.

2. We're NSA proof! No you're not. Being "just anonymous" is really more than enough and overstating -- and then contradicting -- the actual level of anonymity you provide is counterproductive if you're trying to build trust.

3. Get rid of the lorem ipsum. That section confused me most of all. We need examples to understand the product.

You can learn a LOT from HN itself.

HN is heavily moderated and the best part is a lot of people collectively do it and everyone accepts it. That's how the quality is maintained. You need to enforce this from the beginning. Quora did it and has quality. Yahoo! Answers didn't, and doesn't have that professionalism that Quora has. Also, HN has quite a complex rating algo in place for upvotes. You might want to be inspired with that too.

Are you planning to give rating to users based on a voting strategy? It usually attracts people to be more interactive and get more visibility on a platform.

From my own experiences in managing a community/platform, concentrate more on the quality and quantity will increase gradually. Getting a lot of people joining initially itself can open roads for destruction in the future, which you might not be able to see now.

Thanks you so much!

As for the ratings - users get karma (a la HN) for each upvote they get. There isn't any user-rating algorithm behind it, but I plan to do it in the future. Thanks again!

I don't understand how this is unique over the hundreds of blogging and quite frankly opinion article platforms out there. They all moderate, I think controlling how people respond and communicate is a much more difficult process than you might think.

It's not meant to be a blogging platform, mainly because we don't need another one. It's all about content, and so I agree it is a HUGE challenge, and definitely one of my biggest concerns. I don't really have an answer for that, except moderation. I guess we'll have to see how it grows.

Wait a second. Now I'm lost, what is this exactly?

You want the honest truth? Absolutely awful. Not a hint of originality, creativity, or authenticity. Your "Lorem Ipsum" examples scream dishonesty and fakeness. You can't even be bothered to use your own platform a single time to demonstrate how it's actually meant to be used. You built a CMS and are now asking quality contributors to just drop in content without any compelling reason to do so whatsoever other than "I coded this".

"I’d like to invite you to join to something called Interestin."

You have a typo in the first sentence. Kind of tough to read much further when that happens...

The problem you are trying to solve seems very real. But not sure if the solution is right. I dont find it much different or novel than many other similar platforms.

I like the idea of a place where one can express opinions. Kind of a hub for op-ed pieces about any topic. I myself miss some platform to express my opinions about some services, industries, countries, etc. How are you going to organize topics and relevance?

Seems promising! This is a problem I've been trying to solve as well and have had some ideas but nothing substantial, so I definitely think there's a gap in the market.

Looking forward to the beta.

Thanks, Kiro!

I like the idea but dislike the name. It's hard for me to pronounce. My brain kind of get's stuck between 'interest in' and "interestin'"

Thanks, I'll think of something better (open to suggestions).

It somehow hits me as cutesy and "not serious." (can't think of a more specific way of putting that, sorry.) Nothing wrong with that if that's where you're going, but isn't what I'd think of as "opinion journalism."

Maybe another way to put it is, if OP wants to draw in articulate op-ed "columnists" for the site, naming it after a slangy mispronunciation may not be the best way to do that.

Just "interest" is much better than "interestin'" IMO. Non-english words that mean "interesting" could be another bet if you're havin trouble findin domain names.

Some keywords to perhaps start your brainstorm:

Debate

Retort

Opine

Topical

Quibble

Squabble

Fence (as in "what side of the fence are you on" or the sport of fencing)

Argueable

Rebuttal

We've found him. The man who is responsible for all Web 1.5 domain names (including the subsequently-removed vowels).

Thanks, appreciate that!

Also to add to this criticism, change your logo design completely. Blue background with white text, looks too "facebookish".

> Please keep in mind that we will be able to link the content back to your account, in cases of spam, harassment and such.

And on request by The NSA.

It is indeed problematic. You don't have to use your full name though (usernames-only are allowed too). Thanks!

Its an interesting idea.

However, I would replace the pictures with better screenshots. When I scrolled down I, at first, thought my browser was fouling up

Thanks, will do.

Why do I need to be invited? Why can't I just sign up

I can think of the following reasons:

* The product might not be ready yet, OP probably wants to gauge the community opinion before spending precious time on building his project.

* OP might not want to overload his server, in case this goes viral.

> in case this goes viral

It won't.

Promising - I think it fits a nice gap. I never really know how/where to voice my opinions on current affairs etc, so would look forward to this.

Thank you, jp1989!

What's the difference with reddit?

What advantages does this provide over something like Branch.com?

Interestin mostly focuses on user-generated opinion articles and the conversations grow around those articles (in the form of comments and response articles). I think it offers a less-artificial, more natural way of conversing.

Great blog post, where's the actual product?

http://www.interestin.co/

So this is another thing I don't get. Why don't startups just open their product up for everybody right away? Are they afraid users might come by the millions and crash their servers, because their product is too much awesome to be let unprotected in the internets? Getting users onboard is hard, you should actually want them to come and use your product.

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