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Show HN: A new way to view IAmA's on Reddit

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Re: Show HN: A new way to view IAmA's on Reddit

#41

Post by redthrowaway »

xpose2000 wrote: post #2

I have emailed Reddit about the legality of this project. (Have not received a response yet) So far it seems likely that I will have to take down the site. So consider this a small preview I suppose. I plan to port this to a Chrome Extension. Do you guys find this format much more readable than the current completed IAmA?

I'm pretty sure you'll be fine. Erik's a Pretty Cool Guy(TM); I can't see him trying to take down a site whose express purpose is to make the content on reddit more accessible.

Re: Show HN: A new way to view IAmA's on Reddit

#42

Post by redthrowaway »

nostromo wrote: post #23
xpose2000 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any suggestions on fonts to use for readability? I was looking through Google Web Fonts and came up short.

I'd recommend changing some CSS on the H2 elements. You have line-height and font-size both set to 15px, which gives the multi-line H2s no room to breath. I'd also ditch Open-Sans for Helvetica-Neue, which is more readable, remove font-weight:bold (it's too much bold on the page), and tweak the margins. Before: http://i.imgur.com/vaf7U.png After: http://i.imgur.com/a8bHS.png

That looks really slick. Nice job.

Re: Show HN: A new way to view IAmA's on Reddit

#43

Post by buttscicles »

Gnolfo wrote: post #36
xpose2000 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made sure to be nice to reddit. The scrapper is set to crawl reddit once every 12 hours for new "top monthly iamas". Very good suggestion for nested threads. A good example of a reply to a question is on the westboro-baptist-church thread. I think it's possible to implement this suggestion. Will fool around with it on localhost and see what I come up with.

Yeah, I had a limiter put in mine as well so that it only made a request every 6 or 8 seconds. No worries on the suggestion. Those threaded comments can be tricky sometimes. Hey, if you do hear back from them about their stance on this sort of thing, I'd really appreciate if you could let me know what they say. I sort of halted my project after a certain point because I had the fear I'd just have to take it down as s…

You should be able to up that to 2 seconds with no problem, provided you're following the other usage rules of course.

https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki/API

Re: Show HN: A new way to view IAmA's on Reddit

#44

Post by Jun8 »

Super, thanks! Saw a lot of stuff that I missed, e.g. the physicist who can calculate anything:

* If I gain a kilo of weight here on earth, how much more will my wife be attracted to me? Ans: 4x10^-9N

* How large would the wings of a pegasus have to be to allow a horse to actually fly? Ans: 1000m2

Re: Show HN: A new way to view IAmA's on Reddit

#46

Post by [deleted] »

twistedanimator wrote: post #6
redslazer wrote: post #4

The concept is good and its easier to scan than IAMA but the design/typography just hurts to read. I would probably fix that asap. Make it bigger, easier to read and change the font. In regards to your concerns of legality. Reddit seems to be ok with scrapers, bots and the like as long as you dont make more than 30 requests per minute.

A couple months ago, reddit started refusing requests from my web scraper. Figured out they started checking the user agent and refusing connections that didn't look like they came from a user's browser. Unless I missed an announcement somewhere, it doesn't seem like they're overly friendly about allowing web scrapers.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: A new way to view IAmA's on Reddit

#49

Post by nostromo »

xpose2000 wrote: post #32
nostromo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend changing some CSS on the H2 elements. You have line-height and font-size both set to 15px, which gives the multi-line H2s no room to breath. I'd also ditch Open-Sans for Helvetica-Neue, which is more readable, remove font-weight:bold (it's too much bold on the page), and tweak the margins. Before: http://i.imgur.com/vaf7U.png After: http://i.imgur.com/a8bHS.png

Thanks a lot for those suggestions! That looks fantastic. I actually tried to get a designer on board to help with the front-end, but unfortunately he wasn't able to help out. So I did the best I could. :) I will definitely implement these font changes. :)

radsauce :)

Re: Show HN: A new way to view IAmA's on Reddit

#50

Post by sandollars »

xpose2000 wrote: post #16
citricsquid wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've wanted to build something like this for a long time, the problem I encountered (which I couldn't solve) is how to effectively and automatically find not just the questions and answers, but the discussion that stem from them. A good AMA is one that creates discussion between the subject and commenter's so the majority of good content is buried underneath multiple comments. For example I did an AMA and it had a fe…

The problem of dealing with nested comments is very tricky as you mentioned. I did my best to grab the "best" comments, but I know that it does miss some in a deep thread. I will try my best to further enhance its accuracy and ability to continue a discussion. I will also work on the font sizes and perhaps even modify the font choices to further enhance readability. Thanks for your suggestions and feedback! :)

It looks like you grabbed every comment by the OP along with the comment it was a response too.

In at least one instance, I see a situation where someone asked a question, I (not the OP) provided an answer, and the OP then commented on my answer to confirm that my answer was correct. The original question doesn't appear on your website.

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