ecommercematt

There is definitely some merit to this approach, however one shouldn't forget the wisdom in Aesop's fable, "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

If you make enough audacious claims, and fail to live up to them, you lose credibility. People don't just doubt you, they think you're full of it.

Charlie Rose has over 4000 videos on his YouTube channel, if you're into in-depth, yet very calm interviews:

http://youtube.com/user/CharlieRose

"I sold cars to unlicensed drivers."

This concisely describes a mistake that a lot of IT consultants have made (myself included), when the product they've installed/built/configured/whatever works perfectly well, but accomplishes (next to) nothing, because the customer doesn't know how to use it.

Pretty much all of the examples the author cites of failing his clients sound familiar (although fortunately, I have avoided most of them).

The aggressive response of the CEO surprised me. It was a departure from the "customer is always right" approach that so many corporate representatives use that rarely rings true to me. While I'm not sure I'd be pleased with his tone if Comscore's success or failure impacted me directly, it was somewhat refreshing.

The referenced misuse of Comscore's data reminds me of some criticism of Wikipedia. Critics claim that one can't rely on Wikipedia to be accurate. Yet, if accuracy is important to you, you should check and review the sources which are provided toward the bottom of almost every article. Researchers requiring accuracy pursued primary sources before Wikipedia, and they still need to pursue them today. Regarding a secondary source as accurate without verifiying it is misuse, just as relying on Comscore's data on Google's domestic performance to project overall international corporate performance was misuse.

MediaWiki is the king of unrestricted wiki platforms. However, if you're looking to restrict access to certain portions of the wiki, or develop some sort of responsibility and/or permission structure, or add features such as forms and even embedded apps, I recommend TWiki. There are lots of plugins available, and there is plentiful documentation.

YPN?

I've long considered it a flaw in Facebook that one can't try out an application before adding it to their account.

This prerequisite defies one of the best trends in web design today, which is only making signing up required when it adds value.

This is the third time in a short span that I've found myself interested in your comments. Contact me if you'd be interested in discussing issues relating to context online further (my email address is in my profile).

They worked wonders for Michael Scott on "The Office."

Do you have any links or even just names of source material? I'm curious.

Do you have ideas on how to do that?

quick exit strategy != ripping people off

That being said, I agree that there are plenty of motives for hoping for an early exit other than "pure greed."

This reminds me of Paul Graham's "You Weren't Mean To Have A Boss" in some ways.

Do you have links or other info on these guys that you're able/inclined to share?

It is my understanding that Angel Groups presently serve more to facilitate connections between Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors, rather than investing collaboratively. The size of the investments they facilitate vary (likely to fall between seed/YC [5 figures] and VC [7 figures or +] sizes).

Perhaps an enterprising Angel Group can try to package or commoditize the process of making Angel-sized (six figure) investments. I'm not sure the term "Angel Group" would still apply after adopting this model, but Angel Groups seem well-positioned to evolve into this new "new venture animal."

I can only think of two good reasons to do consulting while you're working on your startup:

1) You don't have enough money to survive without the income from consulting. 2) Your consulting gig will help with sales in your startup (specifically, you think the company you're consulting for will buy your product once it is built).

Even if reasons 1 and/or 2 are at play, it still is a distraction. I do consulting for reason 1, but I plan to outmode that with an upcoming angel round. I am not doing all that much consulting these days anyway, but I still feel like it is a hindrance. See a semi-recent blog post about it here:

http://blog.jabbik.com/2008/03/momentum.html

Many users aren't aware that the email field isn't public because it is visible when they view their own profile page while logged in. While your suggested solution is better, it might be an easier and quicker fix to simply add a note next to the email field indicating that the email address is only visible to the administrators. Then, if a user wanted to make his email address available to readers, he would think to pop it into the "about" field (perhaps with some obfuscation).

I have seen confusion with this aspect of account configuration numerous times. Perhaps simply adding a note next to the email field indicating that the email address is only visible to the administrators would help solve this problem.

edit: perhaps you could vote up and/or comment on rms' suggestion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100

Agreed. They are struggling with distribution and monetization.

If this project is "in the works," or still mostly just an idea, I recommend that he seeks a co-founder, rather than an employee. What he is looking for is likely more than just exceptional skill and high dedication. The Denver-based Java expert he's looking for should also have a sense of ownership, which is most easily accomplished by actually giving him ownership (equity). Owners don't walk away from projects as readily as employees, and they usually work a lot harder (at least in the early stages).

Wikipedia.org is down presently, and it is nice to know it is down for everyone and not just me. I hope they come back up soon, as I feel crippled by its absence.

I don't know of any silver bullet, but this is something I've spent some time thinking about regarding my own startup. Our approach is to prioritize quality over quantity, to encourage the type of community-driven content we're looking for down the road. Generic or low quality content populating an unfamiliar site can't result in a positive impression on your users.

Basically, the challenge is to find someone/people with strong writing skills and domain knowledge pertaining to whatever your site is about. Is that you? If yes, why not just crank away for a week or two on the keyboard? If you're satisfied with the content you've produced, but conclude that you need more, then at least you'll have some sample material to present to prospective pre-launch contributors.

I'd be happy to discuss this issue further with the OP or anybody else directly (check my profile for contact info). Our pre-launch content creation challenge is quite different than needing lots of reviews, but it is similar enough that perhaps some mutual benefit could come of a discussion with someone dealing with this, or a similar, issue.

Both of you have points. This leaves me wondering about the process by which submissions make it to the front page. Is this described/written-up somewhere?

That's an interesting perspective. The problem that initially jumps out at me is what to do when there aren't two clear sides to an issue. Any ideas on handling complicated, muddled, and contentious issues with multiple sides?

I enjoyed the hell out of your WYCS essay, and the care with which you wrote it shows. I'm not contesting the arguments made in that essay. If, in this thread, however, you're contending that all ideas are completely relative, and that we don't have any right to pass judgments on them, then I have to disagree. If you're arguing that people should be allowed to speak freely in society at large, no matter how strange or offensive their ideas might be, then I agree. I don't think speech of any kind should be banned, and I fully appreciate how difficult it is to come to genuine truth. Aside from the existence of the self, what is truly knowable, anyway?

Be that as it may, in order to assess the quality of a community-driven site, one has to place value judgements on its content. Sometimes these value judgements fall short of perfection, but they're necessary and unavoidable.

It is interesting that you raised the prospect of filters yielding false positives. If you were talking about my judgement as an individual, then I'll admit that I'm blinded by the human condition, but I'd like to point out that I relied on blanket labels to avoid getting into a discussion of minutia of specific posts on Reddit. If you were referring to filters integrated into the software we'll use for our startup, our approach to avoid the "garbage" (we can agree that there is garbage out there, and avoiding it is a good thing, right?) is to narrow the focus of the site, rather than to build in karma-based influence restrictions and enhancements of individual users.

Hopefully I'll be posting a link here fairly soon, so all of my vague mumbo-jumbo will make more sense, and it'll take less imagination to see how our site could be used for negative purposes and how that might be limited.

It doesn't surprise me that this is a common concern in YC startups. It also doesn't surprise me that the Reddit guys gave the issue consideration.

I agree that limiting the ability to suppress news, even if some people take advantage of increasing openness to advance harmful agendas, is a positive trend. I used to regularly derive enjoyment from Reddit, and occasionally, I still do. Nonetheless, I think Reddit's struggle with various forms of abuse (by idiots, racists, spammers, etc.), is relevant to those of us working on community driven web-based projects (even if "community-driven," and "web-based" are the only traits in common with Reddit, as is the case with my startup). If I were one of Reddit's founders, I'd be troubled by its current state, and I want to do whatever I can to prevent similar problems from happening to our site.

As to what I meant by hate speech, I'll lean on Justice Potter Stewart's words regarding the definition of pornography:

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

There is plenty of hate speech on Reddit, and I know it when I see it.

The first time I discovered your (pg's) existence was when I received a link to your essay "What You Can't Say."

http://paulgraham.com/say.html

You said in that essay "like every other era in history, our moral map almost certainly contains a few mistakes." I agree with you. Nonetheless, I'm sure that it isn't a mistake to consider white supremacist propaganda, for example, to be harmful to society.

I'd be surprised if you haven't encountered hate speech on Reddit, but perhaps you haven't. I imagine it wouldn't take you long to find, if you tried, as I have stumbled across it quite regularly by accident. Regardless, the particulars of my critique of Reddit aren't relevant. Figuring out how to make a community good, and keep it good, is my goal. The consensus here appears to be that an ounce of bad sprinkled in with tons of good is still worth it. I agree, but I'm still going to think about how to reduce that ounce to a gram, or less. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks for your feedback. I agree that protracted hand-wringing over the potential outcomes of my startup would be a waste of time. Nonetheless, I think it is worth pondering the issue.

In a sense, the specific problems I raised with Reddit are just a subset of a larger issue: community-driven sites rotting at their core. Sometimes they rot at their core due to racists (and other types of bigots and hate mongers) spouting off, and sometimes they rot at their core due to idiots being idiots, and sometimes they rot at their core due to spammers.

I raised the topic because I've heard plenty of ideas on how to reduce the number/influence of idiots and spammers on community-driven sites, but I have heard far less about how to prevent hate from taking hold. This is important not just because racism and other forms of bigotry harm society, but because prominently featured prejudice-based hatred diminishes the credibility of the information a given community creates/organizes just as much as idiots and spammers do.

Our concept is not really like Reddit (or Wikipedia), and we think it is less vulnerable to the rot-inducing influences I referenced above.

Regardless of the criteria for censorship, it'd be ineffective on a community like Reddit.

Wikipedia's process for ensuring quality of content is admirable, if imperfect. They benefit from the community's clearly defined constraints and overall mission.

The Hacker's Diet is an interesting approach to weight loss.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/