Show HN: Spiral 2.0 – A Reddit-inspired local message board app | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Spiral 2.0 – A Reddit-inspired local message board app

sprlr.com

5 pointsggiaco2 comments

We're working on building a tool that helps you communicate not with just your friends, or those you share an interest with, but rather the community physically around you.

Got and integrated some great feedback from this community before, including adding a new Incognito post option and other social logins.

Appreciate feedback, specifically around whether we should a) Limit ability to comment/vote on posts that are far away from you, to maintain conversations local b) Whether a local ("leaderboard" / influence/ meowmeow points) would be interesting here, based on positive contributions c) Anything that would make this more useful for you and make you want to use the app more

A few points of feedback:

A) I would absolutely limit comments and votes based on geography. The last thing you want is a popular event being loaded down with "Wish I was there!" comments.

B) Internal ranking of users based on votes, propensity to contribute quality content, and activity is certainly useful. You can use this to highlight things that are sure to be high-quality events, or even give extra spotlight to users who post quality events without a lot of traction. Exposing it leads to folks attempting to game the system. Not that they won't, anyway, but it makes it a bit more opaque as to what they can and can't get rewarded for if it's obfuscated.

C) The ability to use this on the web, without having to go to my phone to check the app. I want to be able to take a quick look, send a link via IM to a friend, and meet them some place there's an event going on. If I have to do it all within the app, then I have to hope that said friend (a) has the app and (b) has it set to allow notifications. I already have set communication paths for my friends--let me use those.

To the point of using it via web and locking down the distance, you should have to either (a) allow your location to be used or (b) be able to set a home city that you can use over the web. I'm not sure what the balance of restrictions is right on the posting only locally and allowing users to set their location, but say, limit them to posting/voting on only 2 locations per session on the web or something.

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