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

Today I launched my solo project, Listry. Feedback/suggestions appreciated

listry.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 85 posts

Re: Today I launched my solo project, Listry. Feedback/suggestions appreciated

#61

Post by barmstrong »

Site looks great. This is pretty similar to an idea i had a few years back: http://buyersvote.com/categories

It has languished since and never took off, but the pieces were all there: user generated listed, votes, wiki style edits, comments etc.

I've had some time to think on why mine never took off and wanted to share a few ideas in case it helps.

- critical mass is hard, StackOverflow (my inspiration for it) was able to launch with two massive blog posts from influencers

- how to counteract this? either empower your users to create their own "sub-listries" and try to attract influencers

- or do the bowling pin strategy http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/

- or do the tripadvisor approach (read Founders At Work for this story) and spend massively to seed content for several years to reach critical mass on your own

Few other thoughts:

- I think your design is better

- Is "Articles" the right word here? Esp given your domain would "lists" work better?

Hope it helps!

Re: Today I launched my solo project, Listry. Feedback/suggestions appreciated

#62

Post by Spines11 »

barmstrong wrote: post #61

Site looks great. This is pretty similar to an idea i had a few years back: http://buyersvote.com/categories It has languished since and never took off, but the pieces were all there: user generated listed, votes, wiki style edits, comments etc. I've had some time to think on why mine never took off and wanted to share a few ideas in case it helps. - critical mass is hard, StackOverflow (my inspiration for it) was ab…

Thanks for your advice and compliments :)

I was debating between calling them "lists" or "articles", and decided on "articles" because my hope is that over time they will become full-fledged articles (true that my domain name makes that a bit confusing). Paul Graham's article on "the 18 mistakes that kill startups" (http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html) is the type of article I am shooting for with Listry. Where each item of the article has 1 or more in-depth paragraphs of explanation or details.

Re: Today I launched my solo project, Listry. Feedback/suggestions appreciated

#63

Post by tapvt »

arturadib wrote: post #10

Are votes really a 1-5 rating? I thought it was bit counterintuitive (I guess in my experience "votes" are typically binary). How about allowing just thumbs up/down?

This question (5-star?) was also the first to my mind once I signed up and jumped into interaction with the app.

Given that each item shows a positive or negative number as its rating, it is unclear to me what the effect of a 5-, 3-, or 1- star ratings is against the net score for that item. I'm reasonably certain what the net effect will be, but it isn't totally obvious. The fact that it isn't so obvious is a friction point that makes me somewhat less likely to interact.

Using the familiar pattern of the binary up/down as arturadib has suggested (and taking a page from StackOverflow, Reddit, etc.) would make the interface much more familiar to me.

Though a binary up/down system would make this point irrelevant, I'll add it to the conversation anyway: It seems to me that over a long enough period of time, the rating for many items (using a 5 star system) will average near 3.

Congratulations on getting Listry out in the wild. Looking forward to witnessing future developments!

Re: Today I launched my solo project, Listry. Feedback/suggestions appreciated

#64

Post by losvedir »

mbyrne wrote: post #52
losvedir wrote: post #33

Very nice. At first, I didn't really see the point of it - another voting/wiki type thing, sigh - but the interface is so fast and compelling that it just drew me in. I registered so I could vote on something, decided to see what creating an article was like, and it was so smooth it made me want to start more, and then eventually realize I have been looking for something like this. I started a list of "Coffee shops i…

side note: losvedir, if you actually are interested in Cambridge Coffee Shops for startups, check out http://hcombine.com/22/hcombine-start-up-coffee-shops/

Hey, that looks great. Thanks!

Re: Today I launched my solo project, Listry. Feedback/suggestions appreciated

#65

Post by chetan51 »

Spines11 wrote: post #42
Spines11 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From this being the top comment, it seems everyone agrees. I'll add it to my to-do list :)

Should I keep the 5 star rating control for rating articles, and change the voting on items to thumbs up/down? Or should I change both the voting on items and voting on articles to thumbs up/down?

+1 for both thumbs up/down

Re: Today I launched my solo project, Listry. Feedback/suggestions appreciated

#66

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

1 little thing -> Your "Browse Popular Articles" and "Contribute to New Articles" buttons are not vertically centered. The white space above them is 6px less than the white space below. It looks like you wanted them to be the same in your css but the #mainbuttons is 65px in height and the buttons are 59px in height.

If you change #mainbuttons height to 59px and bump the margins a little bit more to 29 or 30px you get a nicer look I personally think. A little bit more white space separates the buttons from the top header and to me is easier on the eyes.

I really like the site thought. There's lots of these but yours is different, the content stands out more than the site, and to me that's what matters.

Re: Today I launched my solo project, Listry. Feedback/suggestions appreciated

#67

Post by bdesimone »

Spines11 wrote: post #15
ldh wrote: post #11

At least at this early stage with little content, the site seems very snappy. Looking at the blog, I'm assuming you're running on Google AppEngine? Can you give us an overview of how the site is implemented?

Thanks for noticing the speed :) I spent a lot of effort on that. I built my own mini-framework for Google App Engine with a focus on speed. The main thing that makes it fast is that it utilizes public edge caching for most content, and the parts of the content that change from user to user are updated with javascript. So with the home page, App Engine just serves a static page from it's edge cache, which is updated…

God damn. The site really is fast. Well done.

Re: Today I launched my solo project, Listry. Feedback/suggestions appreciated

#68

Post by drjoem »

Spines11 wrote: post #15
ldh wrote: post #11

At least at this early stage with little content, the site seems very snappy. Looking at the blog, I'm assuming you're running on Google AppEngine? Can you give us an overview of how the site is implemented?

Thanks for noticing the speed :) I spent a lot of effort on that. I built my own mini-framework for Google App Engine with a focus on speed. The main thing that makes it fast is that it utilizes public edge caching for most content, and the parts of the content that change from user to user are updated with javascript. So with the home page, App Engine just serves a static page from it's edge cache, which is updated…

cool
Post reply on HN