
RethinkDigg.com - samkottler
http://rethinkdigg.com/
======
mcantelon
>What they didn’t mention is that we’re rebuilding it from scratch. In six
weeks.

Famous last words.

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

~~~
pteromyscus
One measly article does not a law constitute.

There ARE counter-examples of successful systems re-built from scratch.

The rewrite might have killed Netscape, for example, but without the rewrite
from scratch not only would have Netscape died but there wouldn't be a Firefox
or Mozilla Foundation now.

(And I'd argue that it wasn't the rewrite that killed Netscape: the rewrite
was necessary. What killed Netscape, and would have killed it even without the
rewrite, was that the then all-mighty Microsoft decided to get into the
internet game for real and build a good-enough browser. It's ironic that this
good enough browser was IE6, which we know view as the worst impediment to web
progress).

Also, didn't Frederic Brooks say "prepare to throw one away"?

~~~
jholman
Brooks has repudiated that claim, though. See for example the first question
at:
[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/350008/The_Grill_Fred...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/350008/The_Grill_Fred_Brooks)

Also, if we're going to link Joel articles from the decade before last, let me
add this one which is merely ten years old, and elaborates the ideas from the
previous: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000348.html>

All that said, I think there are things to be learned and gained from
rewrites.

~~~
columbo
To extend on this, a later article talks about how the system is written on an
"in-house language" ( <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html> )
called wasabi.

> FogBugz is written in Wasabi, a very advanced, functional-programming
> dialect of Basic with closures and lambdas and Rails-like active records
> that can be compiled down to VBScript, JavaScript, PHP4 or PHP5. Wasabi is a
> private, in-house language written by one of our best developers that is
> optimized specifically for developing FogBugz; the Wasabi compiler itself is
> written in C#.

So to avoid starting from scratch they introduced a new language/compiler?
Hrm... I question the scalability of this solution, what if every company
decided to do this instead of biting the bullet and doing a rewrite?

~~~
tikhonj
Advanced, functional programming and basic...

Not phrases that usually go together.

------
blu3jack
Ironically, it was "rethinking digg" and "rebuilding it from scratch" that
killed it in the first place.

~~~
laberge
Not really though, everyone knew that V4 was a terrible idea and they simply
went forward without caring much for the community. I mean what kind of
marketing research could you do to prove that using promoted stories is a good
way to build a community?

~~~
SupermanScott
"Promoted Stories" myth needs to end. It wasn't the case, there was a severe
bug whereby a Regular Expression only matched RSS content. The Regular
Expression acted as a gateway into the Popular Algorithm. I worked at Digg and
I fixed that bug.

It wasn't noticed before launch because we echoed the v3 popular stories into
the beta version of v4.

Digg was never paid for stories hitting the frontpage. And for all the flack
it gets for this myth, it should have been.

~~~
laberge
Well the fact rests, the community generally believed that there was a ton of
promoted stories because, you guys never told anyone otherwise or did a poor
job communicating.

And im certain promoted stories did exist, I remember them clearly marked as
that.

~~~
SupermanScott
Digg ads existed that were placed in the feed at slot 3 and 14 which were
introduced in v3: <http://about.digg.com/blog/ads-you-can-digg%E2%80%A6or-
bury>

They were ads that were pieces of content. Digg was in front of this trend
with promoted tweets / stories.

------
jedberg
They're not off to a good start. I just spent 10 minutes filling out the text
boxes on page two, and it just lost all of that info.

I hope the site works better than the survey.

~~~
jonny_eh
I filled out the first survey then stopped at page two. I'm too lazy to fill
in all those boxes. I hope they didn't lose all that "valuable" info they got
from me on page 1.

~~~
iconfinder
Survey monkey keeps the answers from page 1

------
Zarathust
Am I the only one without a smartphone? I'm still using some old, beaten up
Samsung crap which allows me to talk and sms a little. I spend my whole life
in front of a computer, I am still always connected.

Clearly, they are taking the "mobile" approach, it just doesn't suit me very
well

~~~
blhack
It's not just your phone. I have an iPhone and an iPad (well...and another
convertable netbook "tablet" thing that has been sitting in a project box for
over a year), and I don't really "do" mobile.

Mobile _news_? Are people that attention deficient?

~~~
jmduke
My favorite time to read news is my commute. I don't get your point.

~~~
brk
Me too. Hopefully they will use a font big enough to see while I'm driving.

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pavel_lishin
Their question about "how do you get your news" is very significantly missing
Reddit or Hacker News as an answer.

~~~
jrlevine
wow, good call. late night oversight. edited the survey.

~~~
jonny_eh
That section should have radio buttons for the rows, not checkboxes.

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colkassad
Please lose the Facebook/Twitter popup. Get rid of a lot of that ad space and
social media buttons. "News" should not be a major focus. Programming, gaming,
science, and the arts would be a good start.

Stop quoting Silicon Valley insiders and relegate them to a corner of the site
if you must place any emphasis on "tech". They did a lot to ruin Digg with the
endless self-promotion. Acknowledge Reddit like they never did and take
inspiration from subreddits, but make them easier to discover. Reddit has yet
to do this and it is a noticeable deficiency on their part.

------
uptown
So what'd they buy? No team. Scrapped the old code. 500k for the name, and the
ability to get a percentage of their old users to at least take a look when
they launch?

~~~
soup10
Yep, (they paid a lot more than that) and it's probably worth it imo. Half the
battle with web 2.0 sites is getting enough users to get the ball rolling.
Digg already has that, and all they have to do is "reinvent" themselves with a
great design and a focus on some set of users that aren't being well served by
other community websites. Personally I'd try to target groups that reddit
alienates.

~~~
yoasif_
> Personally I'd try to target groups that reddit alienates.

Who are these groups? I'm (re)starting development of my own social news site,
and I'm looking for a userbase to cater to.

~~~
Sergggg
The Anime weeaboo japenese 13 year old female furries/biochemical
engineers/lawyers.

~~~
SwellJoe
I believe that market is already well covered (<https://www.4chan.org/>).

------
mikelbring
So they have less than 2 weeks left, sounds like they waited till now to post
this to insure they can hit that deadline. How much can they really change of
the outlook now, based on the survey results?

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runn1ng
This reminds me of del.icio.us and the new team, that rewrote it from scratch.
It is very similar - old product that shone in the past but was out of focus
in recent years.

The rewrite didn't work right; old users were angry and new users didn't
appear.

But maybe this will be better, who knows.

~~~
joshu
This happened twice. Once at Yahoo, by engineers who really didn't want to
understand product decisions, and then again at the new place, by people who
didn't have access to the original product decisions.

------
jakechance
The first comment on the site when I saw it earlier today was "run reddit in
an iframe."

------
dunhamda
<http://RethinkRethinkDigg.com>

~~~
smspence
Redirects to Reddit.com... clever. In my opinion, Reddit is kind of fun in
small doses, but the groupthink and mob mentality over there is unbearable.

~~~
astrodust
If any site needs a "rethink" it's Reddit. It's like a garden that's overgrown
with weeds.

------
trustfundbaby
I wonder if the name isn't tarnished enough to hold, whatever comes out next,
back from being truly great?

It just seems there's enough baggage for people to dismiss the new digg
offhand if it isn't named something else. What do you guys think?

------
yuhong
This has been submitted into digg itself:
[http://digg.com/news/technology/digg_rebuilding_from_scratch...](http://digg.com/news/technology/digg_rebuilding_from_scratch_in_6_weeks_with_v1_rethinkdigg)

------
dot
They should just put up Kevin Rose's original php version.

------
mcfunley
A SURVEY. Oh this is definitely going to work.

------
dinkumthinkum
I think we're good on digg. It had it's run, arguably way overhyped. Let it
go. :)

------
xster
I humbly submit that anything built in 6 weeks is going to be a disaster

~~~
smspence
Start small and iterate? If built by knowledgeable engineers, I could see it
being decent. It won't be awesome at version 1.0, but what ever is?

------
newobj
Because its a software problem and not a community problem. Right.

------
stevoski
Rebuilding? Why not take the working code and refine, refine, refine,
continuously, so that each week or two the site is subtly better, less buggy,
more usable?

~~~
MartinCron
Rebuilding is a lot more stimulating. I had an engineer quit on me when I
convinced the team to do incremental updates instead of rolling forward with
an over-engineered rebuild that would just trade one set of problems for a
different set of problems.

------
njyx
Kudos that they're the new team is getting user feedback. One thing that would
be sad to loose is the API - it was one of the first back in 2007.

------
andrewfelix
Six weeks!? A well designed static website takes longer than that.

~~~
joeblau
Be prepared to be amazed. I'm pretty skeptical of what's going to result as
well.

------
buddylw
Domain gentrification...

------
greghinch
Hmm we already have the new Digg. It's called "Hacker News".

Good luck, chaps

------
ttran4
"Maybe just put reddit in an iframe?" haha

