Show HN: I built Reddit but for research only

Around 100 sign-ups at the moment, but most are inactive. We're starting to focus more on growing the userbase now. The chicken-and-egg problem is pretty rough!

I'd love to hear any feedback on what we can do to improve.

Re: Show HN: I built Reddit but for research only

#6

Post by jidiculous » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

shuhari wrote: post #5

jidiculous wrote: post #4

What's the size of your userbase so far?

Around 100 sign-ups at the moment, but most are inactive. We're starting to focus more on growing the userbase now. The chicken-and-egg problem is pretty rough! I'd love to hear any feedback on what we can do to improve.

Academia Twitter could be helpful, but you'll have to find the relevant hashtags to follow for each field. You might also actually want to reach out to journal publishers like Nature or Elsevier (blegh) to see if they'll write a short piece about you. The Scientist(https://www.the-scientist.com) also runs news-style articles about peer-reviewed research as well as happenings in life science, so that could be an avenue you could explore for promotion too.

Another thing you could possibly do is ORCID sign-in. If users want their real names associated with their accounts, they may as well have an easy way to link their site presence to their publications, giving them further credibility (and accountability).

Re: Show HN: I built Reddit but for research only

#7

Post by shuhari » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

jidiculous wrote: post #6

shuhari wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 100 sign-ups at the moment, but most are inactive. We're starting to focus more on growing the userbase now. The chicken-and-egg problem is pretty rough! I'd love to hear any feedback on what we can do to improve.

Academia Twitter could be helpful, but you'll have to find the relevant hashtags to follow for each field. You might also actually want to reach out to journal publishers like Nature or Elsevier (blegh) to see if they'll write a short piece about you. The Scientist( https://www.the-scientist.com ) also runs news-style articles about peer-reviewed research as well as happenings in life science, so that could be an ave…

That's some great advice. I'll definitely look into the ORCID sign-in. Thank you!

Re: Show HN: I built Reddit but for research only

#8

Post by jidiculous » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

shuhari wrote: post #7

jidiculous wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia Twitter could be helpful, but you'll have to find the relevant hashtags to follow for each field. You might also actually want to reach out to journal publishers like Nature or Elsevier (blegh) to see if they'll write a short piece about you. The Scientist( https://www.the-scientist.com ) also runs news-style articles about peer-reviewed research as well as happenings in life science, so that could be an ave…

That's some great advice. I'll definitely look into the ORCID sign-in. Thank you!

No problem, good luck!

Re: Show HN: I built Reddit but for research only

#9

Post by caterama » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 9:01 AM UTC

Neat! Any plans to join the Fediverse with ActivityPub? Recently showcased open source reddit clone https://dev.lemmy.ml/ seems to be heading in this direction. Reddit for research could be achieved by hosting a Lemmy instance. With reddit clones popping up left and right, I think the competitive advantage will shift to community and moderation quality rather than technical quality. It could be good to cooperate around a common federated solution allowing individual instances to specialize and focus on community and moderation while everyone benefits from new features and bug fixes. I'm not sure how many reddit clones I can check each day!

Re: Show HN: I built Reddit but for research only

#10

Post by ecesena » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

If I can make a UI suggestion, I'd move the tags on the right and reduce the colors. I find it a bit difficult to skim through the titles if they're not all aligned to the left.