Ask HN: Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system)

Great concept. I would start by putting everything into the dashboard page. Perhaps borrow from the look and feel of the Wikipedia main page, in terms of fitting everything into four different boxes. The theory page isn't necessary; I know it's only for HN readers, but once the site is good enough the concept will speak for itself (it already does for the most part.) Choose a snappier name. This has the potential to get really big. (The YouTube of conversations?)

I like it too. I might even use it, if there are enough high quality participants.

I read the whole Theory page and it struck me as blah blah blah blah blah, except for these two points:

1. Conversations on topics you want, going on right now; 2. Karma keeps the quality high.

To me those are the core, and they're a pretty cool core. If I were you I'd strip everything else out. And emphasize those two things on the main page.

Personally, I'd drop the recommendation system, or at least drop talking about it. There's so much tripe surrounding that kind of thing that, when I read it, I noticed that your credibility instantly dropped in my mind. I'd rather you put your effort into making it really easy for me to browse/search what's going on so that I can make my own choices. Recommendations won't make me want to use your site if there isn't a lot of value there already. And if you do develop a kick-ass way of recommending related stuff, don't talk to me about it, just show me a few suggestions unobtrusively and I'll eventually catch on.

I also like the slogan "chat rooms that really work".

Edit: on reflection, I seem to notice a pattern which, if it really is there, I suggest you avoid like the plague. It is the idea of the system being "intelligent". It comes out in details like your choice of the word "Theory" and the title of this post, as well as in the emphasis on the recommendation system and its overtones of AI. To me this is a big turn-off. I don't want a chatting system, and I certainly don't want an "intelligent" chatting system. What I want is intelligent conversation. It seems to me you've got the kernel of something that could actually offer me that, which could be genuinely valuable. Focus on that and try to get the system out of the way.

Edit 2: while it's fresh in my memory... I noticed another thought going through my mind which was, "I wonder who is on here that I know from somewhere else", like HN for example. I wonder if people would be willing to link their user names to their names from other communities. I would, if I knew that lots of other people from HN were talking about stuff on your site.

Typo on the theory page:

"Coupled with an analysis of your actual chatting history, this data lets Circle makes helpful suggestions as to what conversations you're likely to enjoy."

"makes" --> "make"

I really like the idea. A few things I noticed:

Tagging a conversation with a pronoun like "I" will probably means it sticks around forever.

Can you join multiple conversations at once? What happens if two conversations share a tag? Are they merged?

To stop conversations being tagged incorrectly, you could perhaps ask users that join via that tag if it was accurate or not.

It'd be awesome if you could automate tagging of conversations. I'm not sure how many people will be motivated to maintain metadata about their conversations (the only way to find that out is to get more users though).

I think I was on there at the same time as you, I was very impressed.

It's clean and straightforward and mostly gets out of the way and creates a good space for conversation.

Karma should not be limited in time., think of it this way; in CofC karma is like facial expressions. If you want to experiment with Karma try a decay function where it returns to 1 after a few minutes, and where a users karma donations reset the clock.