Curious how you see Chapp compared to Reddit. Is Chapp meant for real-time discussions as opposed to the more message-board pace of Reddit? Is it aiming to solve a different problem? For example, you mention discussing Game of Thrones or the Stanley Cup playoffs. What advantage would Chapp have over following the discussions on r/GameOfThrones or r/NHL?
Show HN: Chapp is topic-based chat
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Re: Show HN: Chapp is topic-based chat
#22Curious how you see Chapp compared to Reddit. Is Chapp meant for real-time discussions as opposed to the more message-board pace of Reddit? Is it aiming to solve a different problem? For example, you mention discussing Game of Thrones or the Stanley Cup playoffs. What advantage would Chapp have over following the discussions on r/GameOfThrones or r/NHL?
I'm not sure that I can properly answer this question.
Reddit seems to work just fine, and I find it a good way to find new stories and fun content.
That said, I also find the overall structure sort of difficult to navigate/process. (This is my personal reaction—others might feel completely different.)
I'm not so sure that Chapp is really going up against Reddit. That said, I think we're trying to approach this in a somewhat (visually) simpler fashion.
Additionally, I think Reddit comes from a more granular standpoint of "here's a thing; discuss," which for the most part seems probably better than the vague nature of channel driven discussions. But, I think the notion of a broad topic with less focused conversation might have certain advantages as well.
I suppose this isn't that clear of a response. (Perhaps I should blame this on a long day and a couple of glasses of wine.) I think, though, that these are just sort of different things, even if they seem similar on the surface. I suppose in time we'll see if that's actually the case.
Re: Show HN: Chapp is topic-based chat
#23If cookies are disabled/rejected, the splash page goes into an infinite redirection loop.
Not sure why that's occurring. We'll look into it.
Re: Show HN: Chapp is topic-based chat
#24Hehe, cool to see #63 implemented :)
http://jacquesmattheij.com/idea+dump+December+edition
I'm sure that that did not serve as inspiration (and I'm definitely not trying to claim anything here) but it's super nice to see this one come to life. Best of luck to you with this, it's always been one of my favourites.
Re: Show HN: Chapp is topic-based chat
#25Hehe, cool to see #63 implemented :) http://jacquesmattheij.com/idea+dump+December+edition I'm sure that that did not serve as inspiration (and I'm definitely not trying to claim anything here) but it's super nice to see this one come to life. Best of luck to you with this, it's always been one of my favourites.
That's neat, and reassuring. There's always doubt in building things like this. It's nice to see that others saw value/opportunity in the same idea.
The note on your blog about moderation is one that we've been a little stumped by. We built another community once, and found that if we gave that power to the first person in a room (or what have you) some abused this. For example, spammers would get in, and we'd be stuck cleaning up their mess.
Our current thinking on this point, is to make moderator status a privilege that goes to the most active/helpful user in the channel. So, we're working to determine a user's global karma, as well as their karma in a specific channel, based on amount/frequency of interaction, Nods (similar to likes), and number of times their posts have been reported as spam/inappropriate.
This sort of an approach allows moderator status to naturally shift over time to the most active user—knowing that some will likely just drift away from certain channels. Meanwhile, the onus is on the moderator to be fair in their activity, as others in the group could essentially oust them for bad behaviour.
I suppose this is overly detailed; however, you touched upon a topic that has been on my mind. And I think writing this out actually helped me clarify it a little more. :-)
Re: Show HN: Chapp is topic-based chat
#26Re: Show HN: Chapp is topic-based chat
#27Curious how you see Chapp compared to Reddit. Is Chapp meant for real-time discussions as opposed to the more message-board pace of Reddit? Is it aiming to solve a different problem? For example, you mention discussing Game of Thrones or the Stanley Cup playoffs. What advantage would Chapp have over following the discussions on r/GameOfThrones or r/NHL?
I'm not sure that I can properly answer this question. Reddit seems to work just fine, and I find it a good way to find new stories and fun content. That said, I also find the overall structure sort of difficult to navigate/process. (This is my personal reaction—others might feel completely different.) I'm not so sure that Chapp is really going up against Reddit. That said, I think we're trying to approach this in a…
Thanks for the response. I suppose my concern is simply that chat room conversation around a topic doesn't seem to scale well without some sort of structure for organizing input. What impresses me about Reddit is the scaffold it provides for growing communities. Subreddits organize at the "broad topic" level, with smaller topics of discussion voted on to surface the best ones. Then you have the comment section itself, which is basically the "chat room" of Reddit, but with branching and voting dynamics allowing a million diverging conversations to occur without overwhelming the user.
Chat rooms have a place for small communities, but I fear that they simply don't work for larger ones without more internal structure. But maybe you don't intend Chapp to be a tool for discussions at that scale. Regardless, good luck with your project.
Re: Show HN: Chapp is topic-based chat
#28Hehe, cool to see #63 implemented :) http://jacquesmattheij.com/idea+dump+December+edition I'm sure that that did not serve as inspiration (and I'm definitely not trying to claim anything here) but it's super nice to see this one come to life. Best of luck to you with this, it's always been one of my favourites.
That's neat, and reassuring. There's always doubt in building things like this. It's nice to see that others saw value/opportunity in the same idea. The note on your blog about moderation is one that we've been a little stumped by. We built another community once, and found that if we gave that power to the first person in a room (or what have you) some abused this. For example, spammers would get in, and we'd be stu…
Yes, moderation is a problem, especially because it does not really scale. The reason I thought that 'moderator = poster, thread closes when moderators logs out' is a nice trick is because it actually does scale. Another option would be start moderation with the first comment posted, and then to close the thread when it reaches a certain rank. At that point in time you could also shut down the comments.
Re: Show HN: Chapp is topic-based chat
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's neat, and reassuring. There's always doubt in building things like this. It's nice to see that others saw value/opportunity in the same idea. The note on your blog about moderation is one that we've been a little stumped by. We built another community once, and found that if we gave that power to the first person in a room (or what have you) some abused this. For example, spammers would get in, and we'd be stu…
Yes, moderation is a problem, especially because it does not really scale. The reason I thought that 'moderator = poster, thread closes when moderators logs out' is a nice trick is because it actually does scale. Another option would be start moderation with the first comment posted, and then to close the thread when it reaches a certain rank. At that point in time you could also shut down the comments.
I agree, moderation is going to be a real issue for us—particularly as usage starts to increase. My fear with assigning moderation status to the poster, though, is in it being so hinged to one individual. As such, if he/she leaves, the channel stops growing.
We're looking at channels less like a session and more like a set of hashtagged posts on Twitter. In that setting, anyone can tag a tweet; similarly, anyone can post in a channel on Chapp. As such, we allow for the discussion to continue to grow, and potentially shift in nature over time.
This could be the wrong approach, and there certainly are a number of complications that come with it. That said, we like the idea that each channel could grow into a community of sorts. Additionally, we think this approach lends itself to building stores of (indexed) content that could be useful—perhaps akin to a long-standing forum.
Re: Show HN: Chapp is topic-based chat
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that I can properly answer this question. Reddit seems to work just fine, and I find it a good way to find new stories and fun content. That said, I also find the overall structure sort of difficult to navigate/process. (This is my personal reaction—others might feel completely different.) I'm not so sure that Chapp is really going up against Reddit. That said, I think we're trying to approach this in a…
Thanks for the response. I suppose my concern is simply that chat room conversation around a topic doesn't seem to scale well without some sort of structure for organizing input. What impresses me about Reddit is the scaffold it provides for growing communities. Subreddits organize at the "broad topic" level, with smaller topics of discussion voted on to surface the best ones. Then you have the comment section itself…
Yep—it could get tricky, particularly as volume increases. I also agree that Reddit's approach works quite well—in part by having the starting post be so specific in nature that it directs the conversation, whereas, Chapp discussions (already) tend to wander off track from the channel topic.
Frankly, you could be very right about our approach potentially getting jammed-up just due to the lack of structure. We're still not clear on what's going to happen here, and do consider it an experiment. Although Chapp isn't in any way groundbreaking (it's closely informed by many other formats) we see it as something that could perhaps be a bit of a "new twist."
Of course, in building something you don't entirely understand, yet, it's hard to say if you're making the right choices. For example, I would have thought Twitter's 140 character limit was an obstacle, but I think it actually worked to their advantage by allowing for faster, easier interaction for those with something to say but not enough discipline to create longer-format content.
From what we've seen during our first week, I think we might be on to something. Early users seem to like the simplicity of the approach, and a few are really taking to it. That said, we could be misreading this entirely. If nothing else, though, it's been fun so far, and we're curious about where it goes from here.
And thanks for the well wishes!