

Ask HN: How to get feedback? - mixmastamyk

After submitting a pair of Show HN (SHN) stories I was a bit dismayed to see
they received zero interest, particularly as I got up at 6am to post
one. ;) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4196039<p>I wonder what's wrong?  Surely the site must suck (first release should be
embarrassing right?), but even so a few "this sucks ..." replies would
be much preferable to the deafening indifference I received instead.<p>Looking over hnshowcase for the last few days I see that the majority of
SHNs get 0-1 votes or 40+.  I haven't seen a clear division in site
quality between the two groups though, as many of the interesting are
the ignored.  At risk of sounding like a whiner, should I have enlisted
a network of employees or upvoters first?  I'm just a single guy and
this is my side project so I unfortunately don't have those kind of
resources available.<p>What can I do to turn this around?  Would appreciate any comments.
======
duiker101
Uhm i can feel your pain. I do not have a clear answer for you. But i can make
assumptions.

People know each other. A lot of people on this site are in the startup scene
from SF NY etc... many know each other personally. This is a huge help.

People cheat. i do not have any proof but sometimes i notice that something
that might not be totally worth gets boosted by many points in a short time
period. This can be by bot or maybe even being in a small company can help.
Everyone gives a vote from the pc and the smartphone and the number goes up.

Sometimes it takes very little. I think that if a thread get a couple of votes
in the first 30 minutes it is more likely that people will open it and will
vote it. Generating an exponential effect. Same with comments. It takes very
little to distinguished your thread from the mass. If you do not abuse it do
not be ashamed of resubmitting your thread a week later. Maybe with a new
title. Title is also very important.

I usually look mostly at the new section just to find threads that are worth
an help. And i am sure there are other people that do it. You just need to be
a little lucky. Keep in mind what might be the most interesting hour to submit
for you target audience and try. But please don't abuse.

About you submission, you did a good job. You learnt something new, that's the
most important thing. You might want to work maybe a bit more on the design,
especially the colours, it feels, old. But really liked that hovering an event
would highlight it on the map ;)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Thanks, I'm having the same realization. It helps a lot to confirm that others
are too.

Re: the design, yeah I'm a programmer not a designer. I liked the Japanese
color scheme and thought it looked unique. My two design goals were simply
uniqueness and to avoid images/bandwidth costs, so there are some "old school"
elements such as the clipart.

Thankfully there is a provision built in for theming. There are a few choices
already, but I can make one with blue.

------
Toph
I thought of an idea similar to this a few years back but a VERY different
implementation. Unfortunately the project was finished (in code) but never
launched due to limitations of other platforms at the time to support the
overall way the solution worked. Its a good problem to solve.

------
eragnew
my take: a nice demo/tutorial would be nice. i went to <http://lax.kpasa.co/>
and didn't know what i was supposed to do. how do i use it?

+1 if you can demonstrate _within the demo_ why your service would add value
to me as a user. sell the service to me. tell me what i can get if i use this
service.

