

Show HN: An Alternative to Reddit - ryanmelt
http://narf.com

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kolev
Nice, but it's departure from HN's and Reddit's minimalistic clean UI, so,
often the lack of any design attempt is the best design!

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ryanmelt
Perhaps, but I need to differentiate myself. I think the design is a good mix
of functional and good looking... could always be better of course. Thanks for
the feedback.

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dwynings
Maybe you could use embedly to pull in a picture from the submission, instead
of using the alternating robots.

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ryanmelt
I'm hoping the robots are temporary. When users submit stories it shows their
pictures. I've considered using embedly or writing something of my own though.
What do you think is better, user pictures or a picture from the linked to
page?

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ktsmith
I'd rather not see the users pictures at all. With most sites it seems you end
up with a few bulk submitters in each category. Seeing their faces/avatars
over and over again would get really old really fast. I could see it also
potentially altering voting behavior. There are certain users on all social
media sites (reddit and hn included) where some users will be
upvoted/downvoted just due to their popularity or "fame". A visual indicator
might increase those trends as they are faster to spot.

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ryanmelt
Ok. I'll look into using pictures from stories and maybe try some A/B testing
once I get more users.

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ryanmelt
Hi Everyone. This my new product - Narf - A user curated news site. A lot like
Hacker News, which I love, but where people use their real identities. My
theory is that real identities will help produce great conversations... Would
love any feedback you have to give.

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ktsmith
Looks nice, with a clean/simple layout. The only thing I found to be
distracting are the weight and position of the discuss/comments buttons. As
they are aligned with the end of the byline for each article they aren't in
the same place between articles, and being buttons they are significantly
larger than the surrounding text. Of course if your intention was to draw
attention to those buttons it worked on me.

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ryanmelt
The goal is to draw attention, so that people will discuss the stories. Glad
it worked. :)

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greyfade
Facebook login. Cannot use. :(

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ryanmelt
This was one of the first comments I expected to get. :) My theory is that
people using their real identities as provided by Facebook will improve the
quality of the site. We'll see how it goes.

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greyfade
It's a nice theory... Until you look at the sheer range of quality of postings
on Facebook. Have you seen Lamebook? It's utterly mind-boggling. I don't
believe that identity has even the slightest effect on stupidity. Facebook
proves that, in my mind.

Metamoderation has always demonstrated the ability to support quality,
especially in the absence of identity. People lacking history or demonstrating
poor behavior punish themselves and self-select in that environment.

I'm not complaining except for the fact that I'm deliberately avoiding
Facebook - there are people on there I want nothing to do with and from whom I
wish to isolate myself, and the utter complexity of privacy issues on Facebook
further turn me off to it. I feel safer when I can dissociate my accounts
across various sites, however misguided that may be. I'd like to participate
on your site, as it looks interesting, but the requirement of a Facebook
account is a complete dealbreaker.

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JohnGolt
Hi narf's!

What do you use for search?

Don't you want to try hosted search like IndexDen (IndexTank alternative) and
move search management to our shoulders?

BTW: We're helping everyone with integration ;-)

Kind Regards <http://IndexDen.com>

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syaz1
A sorting & filtering feature would seal the deal for me!

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ryanmelt
How would you like to sort things?

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syaz1
You should copy reddit's. Basically time-based sort, and trending submission
sort.

Also inevitably you'd need some grouping/labeling so users can filter out/in.
E.g. I'd never want any submission about cats.

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ryanmelt
The frontpage now has top/new feeds.

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yoasif_
Looks nice -- is this built on Twitter bootstrap?

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ryanmelt
I am using bootstrap... only for a few things like the topic completion
javascript and for a basic css framework. It was a great way to get the site
going. I hoped it wasn't obvious. :)

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joshprismon
I like the name ;-)

