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

Untitled topic

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 65 posts

Re: undefined

#51

Post by csallen »

niko001 wrote: post #31
gjmacd wrote: post #8

simply stated: go back to the old format, it was better. Nothing says that you have to stay this direction. Sometimes things don't work.

Agreed. I can fully understand Courtland's motivation to grow a community (to keep people coming back more frequently / to create engagement) and the best way to do this is putting the forum front and center, but at the moment, the community is much too immature to be valuable. Lots of people asking for feedback (often with zero replies), self-promotional articles disguised as advice from first-time side-project crea…

Got a few questions for you:

1. Why not bookmark the interviews page instead of the homepage?

2. Would it be helpful to you if the interviews/podcasts were more prominently linked from the homepage, or is it only sufficient if they are the primary focus of the homepage?

3. If you don't mind sharing, what do you do? Specifically, I'm curious about whether or not you're a founder, what stage you're at, and what you hope to gain from a site like Indie Hackers.

Re: undefined

#52

Post by ezekg »

csallen wrote: post #50
ih_fan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Courtland, as my username suggests, I am a big fan of IH but I've almost completely stopped visiting. All feedback/suggestions are in good faith. - Blog : this was the single most valuable part of IH in the early days. Your struggles to grow, make money were so relatable. While the numbers might not have given you an idea of how wonderful the blog was, I'm sure people who've read it feel the same. Please consider…

You're hitting me with the tough questions, appreciate that they're all in good faith :) - I enjoyed blogging about IH, but it was also quite time-consuming, and not that many people found it interesting relative to the other stories we feature on the site. So it was just a tradeoff on what's the most effective way to spend my time. That said, I do have a "product page" for Indie Hackers where I will occasionally sha…

You’re hiring engineers for IH?? Have big plans for the future? :)

Re: undefined

#53

Post by csallen »

enra wrote: post #25

Haven't used IH a lot, but I do remember reading few the blogs when posted here and enjoying the interviews. It felt authentic and different content that you would often read on other blogs or website. A month ago, I actually went back to read more but I had similar reaction that many here mentioned. Where I am I, what am I supposed to look at here? Even in the learn section now reads like self-help section of bookst…

I agree that the learn section needs a lot of work. For one, it's tough for the user-written articles to be as consistent as the native content we produce ourselves, so I'd like to create a cleaner separation.

Re: undefined

#54

Post by tmaly »

For me, I think IH has increased in value in some ways. They are doing more meetups, so its nice to be able to converse face to face with people. The newsletter provides curated summary of the best content, so you do not have to spend a ton of time in the forums. In general, the forum is a great place to ask questions and get great answers. It is more niche focused than say HN so your chances of getting an answers are certainly higher. The podcasts for me were much better in the beginning, but I do occasionally listen to one.

At some point, if your going to build something, you have to get off websites and just get your hands dirty building it.

Re: undefined

#55

Post by rutierut »

csallen wrote: post #42
rutierut wrote: post #23

I am still a very active member of IH, read a lot of the posts and comment often. The thing that bothers me the most is that it is currently shifting from a group of people that are helping out each other to a place for people to share their (success) stories. Don't get me wrong there is currently plenty of both but it's shifting towards a more egocentric vibe. Someone created a popular thread a while ago (3th most p…

I actually track this (roughly), and the percentage of people asking for help hasn't decreased over time. It increased in January of this year and has stayed relatively steady since. That said, one thing I may investigate is either removing link-only posts altogether, or limiting them to users who pass some minimum standard. Link-only posts are generally easier to abuse and less useful on IH than they are on a site l…

Given what you just said I think that's a great idea!

Re: undefined

#56

Post by rhizome »

csallen wrote: post #44
louisswiss wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty active on IH as well. Haven't really seen the phenomenon that you're describing yet, but I agree that 'copy paste' fatigue is a bit of a problem - I'm definitely struggling to find the energy to post the same response to what amounts to the same question for the fifth time. I'd like to see the community split up into different threads/sections (like subreddits). We could have a section for [show IH] posts,…

"Subreddits" are coming eventually! The other phenomenon, of people asking the same question over and over, is an interesting one. Unlike StackOverflow, sometimes the same question (e.g. "How should I improve my landing page?") has a different answer depending on what your business is. That said, it would still be nice to do the SO-suggestion thing, and maybe surface some articles as well as some previous threads on…

I mean, you're just reinventing webboards here, so sticky threads and user-footers/.sigs are logical features to implement. Footers so people have a place for their own repetitive info, and sticky threads for the site's own repetitive info.

Re: undefined

#57

Post by lynnetye »

gjmacd wrote: post #8

simply stated: go back to the old format, it was better. Nothing says that you have to stay this direction. Sometimes things don't work.

> Sometimes things don't work.

How do we know that the current format isn't working 100x better than the previous format?

A previous version of the homepage was a personal favorite of mine (and it doesn't exist anymore!), but every change that is made to Indie Hackers was carefully and thoughtfully considered. Courtland and Channing are almost certainly making metrics-driven decisions on what to keep, iterate, or throw away. Even though previous formats were personal favorites to some (myself included), the current format/direction must be serving, engaging, and providing value to more people than before. Don't you think?

Re: undefined

#58

Post by BartBoch »

csallen wrote: post #44
louisswiss wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty active on IH as well. Haven't really seen the phenomenon that you're describing yet, but I agree that 'copy paste' fatigue is a bit of a problem - I'm definitely struggling to find the energy to post the same response to what amounts to the same question for the fifth time. I'd like to see the community split up into different threads/sections (like subreddits). We could have a section for [show IH] posts,…

"Subreddits" are coming eventually! The other phenomenon, of people asking the same question over and over, is an interesting one. Unlike StackOverflow, sometimes the same question (e.g. "How should I improve my landing page?") has a different answer depending on what your business is. That said, it would still be nice to do the SO-suggestion thing, and maybe surface some articles as well as some previous threads on…

I think that the quick solution to help the current situation is this:

1. Allow sorting threads by the time of creation, so discoverability of threads with no responses is much easier. (you can have default and by creation time sorting, this won't be to complex I assume).

2. Maybe finally add a link to interviews to the navbar? This request is simply ignored for months now. You are running a community and you need to be clear on why you are not willing to get it back (after all, its just adding a link).

3. Provide an actionable roadmap with estimated times of completion? For now, there is quite a lot of promises and plans but tbh, the features requested by members the most are usually ignored/forgotten and it seems there are very little changes to the website (besides products part). The roadmap will help the community to see goals and plans for IH and voice concerns before getting forced to accept new features most people won't like. Even a thread every month explaining what will be done. It will help the community to discuss it.

Re: undefined

#59

Post by chatmasta »

I used to check it every day. I stopped reading it when they changed the home page to not include the latest interviews (the only interesting content IMO) and put filtering of them behind a login wall.

Re: undefined

#60

Post by BartBoch »

csallen wrote: post #50
ih_fan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Courtland, as my username suggests, I am a big fan of IH but I've almost completely stopped visiting. All feedback/suggestions are in good faith. - Blog : this was the single most valuable part of IH in the early days. Your struggles to grow, make money were so relatable. While the numbers might not have given you an idea of how wonderful the blog was, I'm sure people who've read it feel the same. Please consider…

You're hitting me with the tough questions, appreciate that they're all in good faith :) - I enjoyed blogging about IH, but it was also quite time-consuming, and not that many people found it interesting relative to the other stories we feature on the site. So it was just a tradeoff on what's the most effective way to spend my time. That said, I do have a "product page" for Indie Hackers where I will occasionally sha…

> Please make it work faster. SPAs are great in theory but are almost always worse than server rendered pages.

This. How often I post a comment, want to edit it, and when I visit a link, the comment is simply missing. I need to go to my profile page to see it.

Post reply on HN