Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Metadocs, kinda like Reddit, but built into every documentation

metadocs8.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 48 posts

Show HN: Metadocs, kinda like Reddit, but built into every documentation

#1

Post by ritinkar »

Hi, I'm Ritinkar and I'm building metadocs, which is kind of like reddit built into every documentation ever.

It's a chrome extension that allows discussion on any webpage to happen there itself.

Currently I have built threaded comments, and a upvote/downvote system.

Plus I've built this cool feature called Highlights, which lets you discuss specific lines in any documentation. As well as a feature called Top Hightlights, which shows the most interesting hightlights on any webpage.

Hope you guys will try it out. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask me here.

Thanks.

Show HN: Metadocs, kinda like Reddit, but built into every documentation
metadocs8.com

Re: Show HN: Metadocs, kinda like Reddit, but built into every documentation

#4

Post by tsol »

There was a cool link curator service called StumbleUpon. You click a button, and it takes you to a random interesting web page. One of my favorite things about this is you can comment on these pages as well. It was fun to see other peoples reactions to random pages, flash videos, memes, art, essay, etc. Eventually I realized that you can click the 'discussion' button even on pages that StumbleUpon didn't bring me to, and there was still a discussion much of the time(The link must already be in the database, of course).

Anyways, I've always wanted to find something like this again. This sounds similar. I'm gonna try this out and take a look. The big thing that makes it work, IMO, is having enough people participating and having comments be moderated. Unique, sincere comments make the experience fun. Spammy, trolling comments make it just every other boring corner of the internet.

I loved this, I could go anywhere on the web and have a comment section. The important thing about this, though, was that the comments were usually pretty relevant. Rarely did I see trolling or off topic comments(Ie politics). It'd usually just be maybe a one line impression of the site. It was perfect.

Re: Show HN: Metadocs, kinda like Reddit, but built into every documentation

#8

Post by ritinkar »

tsol wrote: post #4

There was a cool link curator service called StumbleUpon. You click a button, and it takes you to a random interesting web page. One of my favorite things about this is you can comment on these pages as well. It was fun to see other peoples reactions to random pages, flash videos, memes, art, essay, etc. Eventually I realized that you can click the 'discussion' button even on pages that StumbleUpon didn't bring me to…

Yeah, cold start and moderation are two problems I need to solve.

I'm focusing on documentation pages at first hoping to build a commpunity that is helpful. Like pointing out pitfalls and better solutions to existing problems.

Also I used to be a stumbleupon user too. I don't remember the discuss feature, but I remember using it to find hidden gems of the web.

Re: Show HN: Metadocs, kinda like Reddit, but built into every documentation

#9

Post by ritinkar »

o_____________o wrote: post #6

Cool! How does it identify elements to anchor to, and what happens when the original text changes?

If you're asking how the "Highlights" feature works, its using something called text fragments.

When the original text changes then the highlight is dead. Meaning you can still discuss it, but it will no longer be highlighted in the window.

You can read more about text fragments here - https://web.dev/text-fragments/

Re: Show HN: Metadocs, kinda like Reddit, but built into every documentation

#10

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

tsol wrote: post #4

There was a cool link curator service called StumbleUpon. You click a button, and it takes you to a random interesting web page. One of my favorite things about this is you can comment on these pages as well. It was fun to see other peoples reactions to random pages, flash videos, memes, art, essay, etc. Eventually I realized that you can click the 'discussion' button even on pages that StumbleUpon didn't bring me to…

I too remember StumbleUpon fondly. Now I feel like it's a way to get people to go to questionable sites, but back then it was a lot of fun.

> Rarely did I see trolling or off topic comments(Ie politics).

I wonder if this is due to the format or strictly because of the time?

Post reply on HN