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Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

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Re: Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

#41

Post by ALittleLight »

dpedu wrote: post #40
ALittleLight wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I was wondering if people would find the API and do anything with it. You can use the same endpoint to check approved submissions (status: 1) and rejected submissions (status: 2) although currently there aren't very many rejected as I recently switched databases and didn't bother to transfer over rejected submissions.

Just curious - what format are the user IDs? I thought they may have been IP addresses simply converted to an int, but if that's the case it's been done in a way I can't reverse.

The user IDs don't really encode any information. They are just there to associate a history with a user. When a user visits the page there's a check to see if they have a user id in local storage, if not then it gets the current time and hashes it to produce a new userId which is stored in local storage for future use.

Re: Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

#42

Post by dglass »

I also made something similar called Stumblefun[0], trying to recreate that StumbleUpon experience but without the need to install a toolbar.

Right now it's only focused on SaaS products you may find useful but I'd like to add other categories of websites you can discover in the future.

[0]: https://stumblefun.com/

Re: Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

#43

Post by ALittleLight »

freedomben wrote: post #35
evolve2k wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh also for the sites marked down as bad, create a public /shame list that’s available as plain text/json and we can use it to add to block lists on our own projects.

Not a terrible idea but that could be abused just as badly. I sure hope there's a way to get yourself off this list if you are falsely accused.

I had thought about adding a "top ten likes" list, but decided against it because people might try to like their own website to get it highly ranked, and it would be very easy to programmatically like a website an arbitrary number of times. I think showing a list of bad websites has a similar problem, e.g. there is a communist website in there and some kind of polyamorous Christian-swingers forum, if someone had ideological problems with a website like this they could try to flag it.

Rather than sharing feedback, which might create bad incentives, I'll just add it to my review page, where I review and approve submissions. I'll look and see if anything is getting reported and then choose to remove or leave it.

Re: Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

#44

Post by ALittleLight »

taylodl wrote: post #24
ALittleLight wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. A while back I was trying to find the original StumbleUpon and discovered it had become some kind of social media site, so I recreated what I remembered was the core functionality (click button, get random site).

One of the things you could do with the original StumbleUpon is stumble by category. I had categories for my hobbies and it was really fun to stumble on different pages relating to one of my hobbies. As it is, this is fun and takes you to sites you'd never have gone to on your own! Another idea - people have already mentioned the ability to report pages but I think it'd be cool to be able to upvote a page. Then for e…

Thank you. Categories are a good idea. One category I've thought about is videos as a few people submit those and I've been rejecting them because they don't seem like webpages. Putting them in their own category might solve that though.

As far as upvotes, there is currently a heart button you can click next to the website on the history section. Not very discoverable (looking at the metrics about 1 stumble in a thousand is getting a heart).

Right now the hearts don't do anything but serve as a reminder for a user that they liked a page. I've thought about possibilities to incorporate that into the algorithm (e.g. more likely to get websites that have higher like rates) and having a leaderboard is a good idea too, though I worry that it would give an incentive to manipulate the like buttons. Creating a new user right now is as easy as just generating a random string, so a bad actor could easily cause infinite likes to a page.

Re: Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

#46

Post by DavidPeiffer »

Thank you! I love exploring the little corners of the internet, but haven't been exploring around as much in the past 10 years.

I really appreciate the History portion. If I recall right, StumbleUpon with the toolbar didn't save to history quite right, so I had a tough time getting back to a page after getting click happy. Down the line, liking/categorizing/personalized suggestions would be really nice, but I might be too reminiscing about StumbleUpon too much. :)

I remember setting the Stumble button to Alt+F11. Those two keys were smooth without any markings remaining after a couple years.

Re: Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

#47

Post by joshxyz »

dglass wrote: post #42

I also made something similar called Stumblefun[0], trying to recreate that StumbleUpon experience but without the need to install a toolbar. Right now it's only focused on SaaS products you may find useful but I'd like to add other categories of websites you can discover in the future. [0]: https://stumblefun.com/

Woah this is cocoocoocoocoool

Re: Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

#48

Post by dorchadas »

ALittleLight wrote: post #44
taylodl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things you could do with the original StumbleUpon is stumble by category. I had categories for my hobbies and it was really fun to stumble on different pages relating to one of my hobbies. As it is, this is fun and takes you to sites you'd never have gone to on your own! Another idea - people have already mentioned the ability to report pages but I think it'd be cool to be able to upvote a page. Then for e…

Thank you. Categories are a good idea. One category I've thought about is videos as a few people submit those and I've been rejecting them because they don't seem like webpages. Putting them in their own category might solve that though. As far as upvotes, there is currently a heart button you can click next to the website on the history section. Not very discoverable (looking at the metrics about 1 stumble in a thou…

If you could implement categories, I think this could be almost perfect. I've found that's what I really miss about StumbleUpon. Being able to randomly stumble upon things from a variety of categories that interested me was really great. Found plenty of awesome things through there my freshmen year of college.

Re: Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

#49

Post by SCUSKU »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #32
ALittleLight wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. I have a "like" button in the history section. I will add a "report"/"bad"/"shouldn't be here" button to that as well.

Hey, just wanted to say the first site I got was https://www.the-odin.com , and I thought it was particularly random and cool. "Genetically Engineer Any Brewing or Baking Yeast to Fluoresce" was not at the top of my list for cool presents, but I thought it was super cool!

There is a decent amount of content on Netflix covering the man behind the website. He injected himself with some protein that was supposed to make him more muscular in public as a publicity stunt. Pretty controversial but also pretty interesting.

Re: Show HN: StumblingOn – Randomly find indie websites – recreating StumbleUpon

#50

Post by dglass »

joshxyz wrote: post #47
dglass wrote: post #42

I also made something similar called Stumblefun[0], trying to recreate that StumbleUpon experience but without the need to install a toolbar. Right now it's only focused on SaaS products you may find useful but I'd like to add other categories of websites you can discover in the future. [0]: https://stumblefun.com/

Woah this is cocoocoocoocoool

Thanks! I know there are some old urls in there that no longer load successfully that I need to clean up. It's been a few months since I've done any work on this but maybe this is some good motivation to get back to it :)
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