

Show HN: Discusslr.com - owainlewis
https://discusslr.com/

======
mrmondo
Well done for making something and having the guts to share it with the world.

A bit of critical feedback:

1) the image of a girl on the beach doesn't seem to have much relevance or am
I missing something?

2) how is the data stored and backed up? (Details on encryption, backup
regularity etc...)

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owainlewis
Hi. Thanks for the feedback. Being honest this is a really early stage idea
and basically I just wanted to get some nice photography on the home page.

Data is currently stored in RDS on Amazon. When moving to doing private
discussions (the next major feature) then I'll really focus in on security and
possibly encryption on the messages. Privacy is an interesting topic actually.
Making sure private conversations are "unreadable" is something I'm very
interested in.

------
owainlewis
I added a discussion for product feedback and improvements that should be open
without any need to sign up.
[https://discusslr.com/discussions/8](https://discusslr.com/discussions/8)

~~~
daniel-levin
Your discussion has been hijacked by somebody posting /r/spacedicks type
pictures.

~~~
owainlewis
Yeah I disabled images for anonymous comments. Should have guessed that would
happen.

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dutchbrit
This is a very basic product, don't get me wrong, basic is a good thing.

Some feedback: Registration is very nice, simple steps. However, log in with
Gmail/Facebook/Twitter might be a nice option in the future too.

How do you handle links? I didn't check this since I'm on mobile but nofollow
would be a good idea to prevent spammers. Maybe even add Google's recaptcha to
prevent spam bots for anonymous users/on registration?

For groups/companies, it might be nice if we can register a sub domain and
allow others to post new discussions in there to keep it all grouped. But that
would mean there'd have to be a moderation option (?).

~~~
owainlewis
Hi. Thanks. I suppose the who idea is to keep it simple but some new features
will be added for private conversations, better link handling as you
mentioned. Will definitely need to start thinking about handling spammers on
anonymous comments. i had to turn off images for that very reason. I'll change
it so that only logged in users can post images from now on.

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Kiro
The site is broken for me. I don't see any text. It's just white and blue
boxes with a background image of a girl.

~~~
owainlewis
Hey. Which browser are you using out of interest?

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zatkin
I'm having the same issue on Arch Linux, Chromium, Version 42.0.2311.90
(64-bit)

~~~
th0br0
Huh. Works for me with Fedora, Google Chrome, Version 42.0.2311.81 (64-bit)
and 43.0.2357.37 (64-bit)

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jgrahamc
My instant reaction to the name was that this had something to do with
'cussing' not 'discussing' because I put the emphasis (in my mind) on cusslr
and read it as dis-cusslr. Others might have the same reaction.

~~~
owainlewis
That's interesting. I never would have thought of that. I just started with
the word "discussion" and tried to find an available .com. It's so difficult
to find domains for new products.

------
owainlewis
A tool I made to quickly start and discuss things online. The idea is to
quickly setup a conversation about something, share the link and start
talking. Comments can be public or anonymous.

~~~
visakanv
I'm always interested in conversation and in supporting people trying to have
good conversation.

Some hopefully constructive thoughts: There's nothing about the landing page
that makes me want to sign up. Could you show me an example of how it works,
what it looks like?

Ideally I think you'd want to seed it with pre-existing conversations, so that
new users don't feel like they're signing up for one more thing that doesn't
have any obvious value.

Chicken-egg problem– Quora, Reddit, and I'm sure HN itself all started with a
small group of people who were having interesting conversations.

~~~
owainlewis
That feels like the hardest problem initially. Like you said it's difficult to
really explain the concept until there is more content and discussion
happening.

Adding the ability to post "anonymous" comments was partly motivated by people
who might not want to sign up. If a conversation is "open" then anyone can
start commenting without having to sign up.

~~~
visakanv
This might seem sneaky but some people do this by literally having
conversations with themselves, using multiple IDs. Sleazy, but hey, if the
conversation is great, I'd be more tempted to join in.

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xtrumanx
Submit button below the comment box is an <input type="submit" /> but missing
a value so it says "Submit Query" on Firefox. Probably should change that.

~~~
owainlewis
Thank you. A few people have raised this. Will roll out a fix now. Stupid
mistake. Sorry about that.

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lcnmrn
How is this any different than [https://sublevel.net](https://sublevel.net)?

~~~
tux
I've tried both of this sites.

[https://discusslr.com/discussions/29](https://discusslr.com/discussions/29)

[https://sublevel.net/tux/](https://sublevel.net/tux/)

Discusslr is more like chat and allows you to register without captcha and to
reply you don't need to register. SubLevel you need to enter captcha and be
registered to comment, it also looks more like Twitter. But SubLevel provides
more features like RSS feed of your recent posts.

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brenfrow
Sounds similar to my domain [http://discusr.com](http://discusr.com)

~~~
owainlewis
Nice. Looks like a neat tool. How did you come up with the name?

~~~
brenfrow
I wanted to use medium.com but it was closed invite, so I made my own website
and then added readability like viewing options. The name came from a previous
website that was for people of different religions to discuss on a facebook
like feed system. However I scrapped that idea.

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anton_tarasenko
owainlewis, I think you could increase signups if you'd add a few screenshots
of the discussions. Or let new visitors read them without registration.

~~~
owainlewis
That's a great idea. I think the homepage probably needs some more work around
explaining the product and screenshots would be a good move. I'll take a look
at improving it today.

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Mithaldu
How is this in any way different from ... forums?

~~~
Trombone12
A big part of a forum is the centralization and interconnection of all the
threads, this is explicitly removed in this product, with all the discussions
happening in their own and very separate context.

So I guess the use case would be to share a link on social media and then have
the discussion in something that is not as awful for real discussions as
facebook threads or twitter conversations.

~~~
Mithaldu
I'm not sure making a forum that simply has only one board and no public index
is a useful enough differentiator for this project to survive at all. You
could do the same thing with secret github gists, AND at the same time already
have a much more fully-featured everything.

~~~
owainlewis
I'd see this being more useful to a non technical person who doesn't use
Github for example and just wants to start a quick conversation. They can
create a discussion and open it up to the world. Given a bit more time there
will be more features to keep track of mentions and notifications that lift it
up from it's currently very basic state.

