
Show HN: Open Hunt – an open and community-run alternative to Product Hunt - mhurwi
https://www.openhunt.co
======
mindcrime
I will definitely use this over ProductHunt. I mean, for crying out loud, I
signed up for PH just now to leave a comment and the first thing you get is
"commenting is restricted to those users invited by others in the community".
Yeah, so I have to supplicate myself to some random Internet stranger and beg
permission just to comment on your site? Not happening...

~~~
colinbartlett
I signed up for Product Hunt more than a year ago and still do not have
commenting access. My product was submitted by someone and featured even! And
I wasn't able to respond or interact with the "community" in any way.

~~~
hk__2
I’m in the first 3k users and still can’t comment. I was able to submit stuff
at the beginning but they quickly limited this functionality to some group of
users.

~~~
tedmiston
I asked someone I knew who already had comment access in the early days (my ID
is not lower than yours though) and they shared one of their invites. Each of
us from that got 3 comment invites to hand out.

------
jacquesc
For a bit of background:

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875)

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10741827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10741827)

I've been a Product Hunt user from their initial HN launch and am still a big
fan. They've made a very important impact in the tech scene. Open Hunt is an
honest attempt at a community run alternative, tailored to giving / getting
feedback, and finding very early stage stuff.

Would love your feedback!

~~~
minimaxir
As the chief complainer about Product Hunt, I appreciate that transparency is
out front-and-center, with clear documentation on how your service aims to
avoid the same pitfalls.

That being said, it reminds me of another service with the same goals: Ello,
who _also_ said they were not going to take venture capital. We know how that
turned out.

I mentioned in the threads that a Hacker News/PH competitor may not be better
mechanically. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done there,
particularly with ranking algorithms.

~~~
jacquesc
If it gets to the point where it needs revenue to handle the hosting bill,
it'll be organized as a non-profit and the community will decide how to handle
things (via ads or whatever else).

~~~
nl
Personally - as feedback - I don't have problems with it being a for profit
company.

------
msvan
The idea is nice, but cynical me can't escape the idea that Product Hunt is
successful in part because it is a mirror of reality, where capital and
connections are the reigning currency. If you create a platform where capital
and connections are deprioritized, you will not attract the people who have
that in real life, making it less useful as a promotion venue.

~~~
slg
And maybe it is the cynical contrarian in me, but I think the "real world"
aspect of Product Hunt it what turned me off of the site before these issues
even came to the forefront. It always seemed like an echo chamber were
everyone was putting up a facade. Users seemed more concerned with the people
behind products and networking with them than actually offering opinions of
what was posted.

I find the more internet-like communities more natural. Sure, the top comment
on a Show HN is often a critique. However I find that more interesting than
the usual "Wow, another great product from John Developer. Signing up now." or
the "Wow, great product. Here is why you should use the competing product that
I work on." that you usually see on Product Hunt.

~~~
kristianc
I hadn't thought of it this way before.

Sure, it's slightly depressing that the top comment on a HN thread always
seems to always be a takedown (especially when the post cites data and the
comment is 'From my experience..') but the alternative is pretty terrible.

------
richardbrevig
I love this! "Login unsuccessful. Something went wrong: Error: api_calls
exceeding plan authorized calls" when I went to log in with Twitter. Good
problem for you to have, I look forward to you working this out so I can
participate.

Honestly, I only signed up for Twitter to join Product Hunt. That was a huge
disappointment when I found out that having an account didn't mean anything.
This will be a pleasant change, it's about time.

~~~
elwell
> Honestly, I only signed up for Twitter to join Product Hunt.

Yeah it's quirky that both sites force use of a Twitter account.

~~~
tedmiston
Not defending it, but at the time they launched being able to seed from your
Twitter social graph was a jetpack for improving the quality of experience,
and vital to building relevant notifications on day 1.

------
DanBC
I'd join this.

It's asking for scary permissions:

> Read Tweets from your timeline.

> See who you follow, and follow new people.

> Update your profile.

> Post Tweets for you.

Please, consider adding more options, or explaining how you use those
permissions. (For example, you can do what you like to my facebook wall.)

EDIT: Lack of public posting is an interesting choice. It doesn't feel like
much of a community. I can see that public comments risks undue negativity or
aggressive feedback.

~~~
jacquesc
Oops, that's a mistake. We meant to do read only. Fixing now

~~~
_nate_
Can we create an account without twitter or FB in general?

~~~
jacquesc
yep, that's definitely on the table. its a community run project, so please
add a github issue and we can start the discussion about pros/cons

------
mmohebbi
You should take a look at lobsters. They solve a lot of the transparency
issues that some have with HN and ProductHunt.

"Some other link aggregation sites are operated by corporate entities which
may have significant financial incentive to censor or artificially promote the
links and discussion that relate to those entities, their investments, or
their competitors. Some of these sites have had moderators of popular sub-
forums banned after it became known that they were being paid by 3rd party
companies seeking special treatment of their submitted stories.

All moderator actions on this site are visible to everyone and the identities
of those moderators are made public. While the individual actions of a
moderator may cause debate, there should be no question about which moderator
it was or whether they had an ulterior motive for those actions.

All user voting and story ranking on this site uses a universal algorithm and
does not artificially penalize or prioritize users or domains. Per-tag hotness
modifiers do affect all stories with those tags, but these modifiers are made
public and usually used to shorten the life of meta-discussions. If certain
domains have to be banned from being submitted due to spam, the list will be
made publicly available.

If users are disruptive enough to warrant banning, they will be banned
absolutely, given notice of their banning, and their disabled user profile
will indicate which moderator banned them and why. There will be no hidden or
childish "shadow banning" or "hellbanning" of users popular on some other
sites.

The source code to this site is made available under a 3-clause BSD license
for viewing, auditing, forking, or contributing to. This code is always up to
date with what is running in production on this website.

Public stats are available for site requests, comments submitted, stories
submitted, and users created."

[https://lobste.rs/about](https://lobste.rs/about)

[https://lobste.rs/moderations](https://lobste.rs/moderations)

~~~
minimaxir
Granted, the "sign up by invitation" policy also is _the primary reason why
Product Hunt has become such an elitist club_. Using an invite-system to
counteract that would be self-defeating.

------
danielrakh
So who's going to be the first one to submit this to Product Hunt? :D

~~~
donfrancisco
I does it. So meta. Much huntings.
[https://www.producthunt.com/tech/openhunt](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/openhunt)

~~~
mindcrime
Now somebody should submit ProductHunt to OpenHunt!

~~~
OJFord
[https://www.openhunt.co/#open=product-
hunt](https://www.openhunt.co/#open=product-hunt)

------
Vaskerville
It's ridiculous the way they hand out the ability to make comments. These
days, the comments are so watered down many of them are mostly useless. "Tell
us about your process"..."tell us more about onboarding". Comments are filled
with marketers and friend of friends egging things along without substance.
It's hurting the site - if they don't see this they are really missing the
boat.

That being said, it's sad to see people rip on others sites/ideas blatantly.
OpenHunt should quickly come up with an original design and find something
unique in their approach.

~~~
jfoster
The democratic element is the unique thing about their approach, isn't it?
Their view is that by giving the community control, the site will be more
interesting than something that is tightly controlled.

------
mythun
Love the idea. But a positive part abut PH is that I can view the discussion
on the product by people (sometimes) more experienced than me, and then decide
if it is worth my time to install/test out the product. If feedback on OH is
private that angle is removed.

But definitely back the idea - PH has become too undemocratic, and its obvious
that if you don't have the right connections your product will never surface.
I know people who've reached out to "influencers" on PH to have their product
hunted by them.

------
tedmiston
You're #1 on Hacker News and Product Hunt today with an app whose repo was
created 12 days ago and your server is not down. That's commendable in itself.

------
tarr11
Tried to join:

Login unsuccessful. Something went wrong: Error: api_calls exceeding plan
authorized calls

~~~
tshtf
Gotta love an open platform like Twitter....

------
Cyberdog
Could you please make the description text darker for each listing? Light gray
text is very hard to read against a white background.

~~~
jacquesc
Agreed! tracked via
[https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt/issues/33](https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt/issues/33)

------
MattBearman
I'm really happy to see this. As the solo-founder of a bootstrapped start up
nowhere near Silicone Valley, things like Product Hunt can make me feel like a
complete outsider.

Quick question: PH wants people to sign up with their personal Twitter
account, rather than a company one, is that the case here? I never use my
personal account, so would prefer to be able to sign up using @bug_muncher

Also, I love the "You reached the beginning!" message at the bottom, not sure
why, but it really made me smile :)

------
BorisMelnik
I also signed up for Product Hunt 1+ years ago and don't have the ability to
comment even though I regularly share things on Twitter, purchase products,
curate lists and interact as much as possible.

+1 for any alternative system.

------
goodJobWalrus
If you are naming it "Open Hunt", clearly as a jab at PH, you are giving it
more attention than you should, given your mission, IMO.

~~~
giarc
FAQ states that Open Hunt is just temporary. Probably to draw people in.

~~~
goodJobWalrus
Duly noted.

------
sandGorgon
This is pretty cool - I notice you're building on top of Rails. Do consider
using the source code of lobste.rs (which is like HN but open source). It has
quite a bit if community development behind it and I daresay can be quickly
adapted into the product hunt model.

[https://github.com/jcs/lobsters](https://github.com/jcs/lobsters)

I'm trying to build in elasticsearch support in lobsters for a personal
project - it currently uses sphinx. But it could be pretty cool if you can use
that as a starting point.

------
sycren
Did you consider using
[http://www.telescopeapp.org/](http://www.telescopeapp.org/) to build this
open version?

------
eecks
Without comments it doesn't feel like a community

~~~
jacquesc
Agreed. We'll probably add comments (in addition to private feedback for
product owners). Just need a bit of time. Maybe by monday? ;)

~~~
eecks
Awesome

------
kevindeasis
I will be using this because I think Product Hunt can't manage their waiting
lists. I mean I've been waiting for a long time to be removed from the waiting
list. I've also been doing their "suggestions" to get a full membership. But,
I get nothing. Hopefully Open Hunt gets a stronger community.

BTW: your api calls for registration has exceeded

------
bambax
Great idea and execution; already discovered a super-useful service, Bulk
Resize Photos.

Not sure if this is a feature or a bug: when one clicks on the "comments"
line, it opens a right-side panel for the current item; if one clicks another
comments line, the right-side panel is updated with the new item => so far so
good.

BUT, when one clicks on _another_ item while the right-side panel is open, it
doesn't update said panel; it opens a new tab to the item's website, but the
panel doesn't change, so that when one comes back to OH, the panel doesn't
match the last consulted item.

It's probably not an easy fix, because, what should happen when one opens more
than one item?

However, since the comments pane is super simple, maybe it would make sense to
open it _under_ the corresponding item instead of to the side, so that it's
visually related to the correct item instead of being in a generic location?

My 2 cents. Very cool initiative anyways.

------
bonyboy
Congratulations, I hope this gets the traction it deserves.

Disrupting the disrupters.

------
pibefision
I like the idea. why comments are not public?

~~~
jacquesc
2 reasons initially:

\- prevent too much spam, moderation workload

\- encourage honest (harsh) feedback that the product owner can take action
on.

also if the same feedback comes in twice from 2 diff people, thats a great
indicator. public comments do not allow that (since most people wont duplicate
a comment if they already see someone else saying it)

~~~
minimaxir
Those are both very bad reasons for making commenting private.

1\. A downvote system is sufficient to catch spammers, with explicitly
moderation needed for edge cases. (And those edge cases would be applicable
even in private commenting)

2\. Harsh feedback is discouraged on Product Hunt _because_ of the elitism.
Having comments public will not discourage it. (C.f. Hacker News)

~~~
jacquesc
oops, i forgot to mention the real reason: lack of time for v1 :)

adding a real commenting system is on the table for sure, ill create a github
issue for it and we can discuss with the community about pros/cons

------
unclebucknasty
It seems that one problem with a purely community-driven site like Open Hunt
is that the overwhelming majority of people are interested in publishing to it
vs. consuming from it. Sure, you might browse it to see if anything there is
interesting, but most of the enthusiasm will come from those seeking a channel
for their product. Hence, the audience itself vs the publisher set is limited
in comparison to "that other site".

OTOH, the latter site is presumably visited by potential investors and others
who have a financial interest in consuming what's published.

Additionally, without "throttling", you have a ton of stuff featured, adding
to the skew. Thus, much of what's submitted has only one or two votes. People
are primarily posting and moving on.

Or, am I missing something?

~~~
jacquesc
100% agree that this is a problem. And no silver bullet solution. Product Hunt
actually took a perfectly reasonable approach to this (heavy curation), but
Open Hunt exists in order to try to tackle the problem using a different path.

We have some ideas on it already. Possibly some sort of queuing system where
you can schedule it to post in the future, with a # of slots reserved every
day for the queued up in advance ones.

But this topic will take a lot of discussion, and we're hoping we can get lots
of different opinions on the matter before deciding on a course.

In the meantime, pure voting should bring the best products to the top, in a
daily list. We'll also give products a chance to resubmit after a certain
period of time.

------
pavornyoh
I really like how you keep updating the site throughout the day based on the
feedback you are getting here. Also, the suggestions made by users going
directly to the creator of a project is pretty awesome. Good job.

------
intrasight
Within a couple weeks, this is going to need curated categorization of
products. At the highest level, I'd categorize as: a. physical product b.
installed software product c. web service product d. hybrid software+service
product

Could be even broader. Or use tagging. You probably wouldn't look in the above
categories for performance events, dining out, or phone sex. Must decide how
wide a net you wish to cast, and what ontological approaches to use. But this,
in my opinion, is where it gets interesting.

------
mckee1
Where is the feedback shown? I have submitted "Too" and it says one person has
left feedback but I can't see it anywhere (I am logged in with the account
that submitted).

~~~
jacquesc
Since anyone can submit a product (not necessarily their own), we are adding a
verification step (email to [any]@yourdomain.com). We'll have other
verification steps as well to make those feedback items available.

------
mrnismo92
1) This is pretty cool

2) I think this and Product Hunt can co-exist

3) I'm interested in learning about how other members think Open Hunt can go
from "open community" to "sustainable community"?

------
return0
I find myself using it already - great job!

Edit: The subtitle font is way too washed out. i struggle to read it. Also
some submissions are not "products" \- is that appropriate?

------
astrowilliam
I'm getting this error when trying to sign up with Twitter.

"Login unsuccessful. Something went wrong: Error: api_calls exceeding plan
authorized calls"

~~~
jacquesc
fixed now. my fault

------
AndrewKemendo
I signed up and submitted actually.

I am curious, why are comments/feedback all hidden? I would certainly like to
read those - even if they are made anonymous.

------
toni
Can you please add a RSS feed?

~~~
jacquesc
good suggestion! I'll create a github issue for it

~~~
toni
Thanks! I didn't know OH is on Github, otherwise I would post an issue myself
:)

------
dayaz36
Will be interesting to see the quality of products from both sites. Will
definitely be using Open Hunt from now on, then go over to PH to see the
discussion on the products. I have no idea why they made the comment section
private. That's the only downside I see to the site. Everything else I like.

------
webmasterraj
Make sure you guys get a daily newsletter going out asap. I don't have inside
information, but I'd guess it drives a _ton_ of PH's daily returnee traffic. I
for one know I won't be checking this every day, but I would read something in
my inbox every morning (same with PH)

~~~
jacquesc
agreed! tracked via
[https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt/issues/16](https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt/issues/16)

~~~
giarc
Don't do daily... or atleast let people sign up for daily/weekly/monthly. The
PH daily emails were too much. I already get enough crap I don't read, it just
makes me resent the site if I feel they are spamming me too much.

------
sideproject
For those who would like to launch their own version of HN or PH, would love
for you to check out HelloBox - something we've been working on for awhile.

[https://www.hellobox.co](https://www.hellobox.co)

[Now that I think about it, I should put this on the OpenHunt!]

------
eps
Getting stuck on "Completing login..." screen, with the URL of
[https://www.openhunt.co/login/callback](https://www.openhunt.co/login/callback)
\- just sits there and nothing happens. Using stock iPad.

~~~
jacquesc
Sorry, looks like a bug. I'll log it in github issues and try to repro. Can
you email me at jacques@openhunt.co? I'll reach out with questions if I hit
snags trying to repro it.

Thanks for the heads up!

------
voltagex_
Uh oh: Login unsuccessful. Something went wrong: Error: api_calls exceeding
plan authorized calls

~~~
welder
[https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt/issues/15](https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt/issues/15)

------
safeharbourio
For upcoming PH excluded startups, this is amazing, good job jaques, live long
and prosper!

------
peckrob
Hey, this is really cool! Any chance you could add a daily summary email (like
PH and some other similar sites have), or am I just missing it? That's a
really easy way for me to keep up with what's been featured.

------
secondbond
Problem will be number of posts per day. There is gonna be huge number of
products everyday and some gonna buried down not because of there are not good
but there are not so visible - timezone problem.

~~~
DarkTree
What about a system where, if a product gets a certain amount of upvotes, it
gets pinned to the top. So maybe there could be 10 or so products that get
pinned to the top each day because they hit a threshold of upvotes, with the
rest battling for a spot on the pinned list every day

------
andrewstuart
It should have paid as well as organic otherwise there's no business model and
it's just a small rebellion that might be abandoned for lack of income.

~~~
jacquesc
Thanks for the feedback. Can you elaborate?

We'd like to build something sustainable, and to start that just means
building the community. Monetization concerns would be an open question that I
think the community could decide on later.

Would love to learn more about what you have in mind.

~~~
andrewstuart
Just the same as google. Organic is what you have. Paid ads on the side or
above - for startups who want their company name to remain in the limelight
beyond their one day of organic listing.

FWIW I think the name is pretty ordinary. "OpenHunt" just means "copy of
ProductHunt" and "open" means nothing except to try to have a position against
PH. What you have has no identity of its own.

~~~
jacquesc
Agreed! As mentioned in the FAQ
([http://openhunt.co/faq](http://openhunt.co/faq)), we intend to rename the
site (and use the community to decide on the real name).

~~~
mod
Take this with the caveat that I don't know much about how OSS works.

I think you should step up and make OH in _your_ vision. This wishy-washy
stuff on name, public comments, etc being up to the future community--I think
_you_ need to set the standard there, and then have it open to modification
later.

~~~
andrewstuart
I agree. There's "fixing the PH democracy issue" and then there's going to far
down the "hippy free love everything is a community all decisions are joint
and open and everyone's opinion counts". The hippy path is a recipe for
stagnation and failure - vision is needed and decisions, not abdication of
responsibility to "the community".

------
goodoldboys
Just tried emailing you at the address listed on your site and got an
undeliverable. Definitely interested in helping contribute.

------
ex3ndr
What platform are you using behind this?

~~~
jacquesc
ruby on rails - take a look at the source:
[https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt](https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt)

------
onurozkan
nice alternative to PH, i believe its a good chance to smaller projects to be
on spotlight.

why OpenHunt is good for PH;

\- It will be a PH's moderation app, every nice project can be submitted by
PH's trusted members. \- PH can get valuable feedback from this thread. \- PH
can integrate every feature from OH

------
moron4hire
I don't like that the comments aren't public. I'm finding it way too easy to
be short.

------
secondbond
Interestingly, no news coverage yet for Open Hunt. May be, conflict of
interest with Product hunt.

------
eecks
Disappointed by the twitter only sign up but I am still going to join because
I like the idea.

------
withoutfriction
Please fix the modal on mobile -- ios9 it seems impossible to get rid of the
modal :)

~~~
jacquesc
fixing this ASAP. thanks for the heads up

tracked via
[https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt/issues/13](https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt/issues/13)

------
Uptrenda
Good ideas in retrospect always seem so obvious at the time. Love the idea OP.

------
etewiah
Wow, love it!! Hope you guys kick the producthunt mafia out of existence.

------
t3ra
PH team's reactions must be like :

Day 0 : Yeah other 'PH is crap' HN/blog/medium post

Day 2 : Oh so someone 'anonymous' is building a competitor.. They are having a
Google form.. How noobish

Today : haha Oh look they copied our design . how original

Future : oh we need to pivot

------
mindcrime
And just to make things even more meta:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/openhunt/](https://www.reddit.com/r/openhunt/)

(If somebody affiliated with OpenHunt wants control of that sub, just message
me).

------
pcmaffey
My suggestion for a name: "Gather"

or some iteration thereof...

------
kaushikt
Great job.

High time you add pagination on the landing page now. :)

------
misiti3780
tried to sign up and got this after twitter auth:

Login unsuccessful. Something went wrong: Error: api_calls exceeding plan
authorized calls

~~~
jacquesc
fixed now

------
KuhlMensch
Nice, but will wait until comments are public

------
free2rhyme214
Awesome!

------
iliaznk
I wish there was RSS feed.

~~~
jacquesc
Great suggestion! We're planning on it: tracked via
[https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt/issues/32](https://github.com/OpenHunting/openhunt/issues/32)

~~~
iliaznk
Good news! Thanks!

------
tmaly
how long did it take you to put the site together?

~~~
jacquesc
~48hrs across 3 people.

coincidentally i help organize a 48hr hackathon called nodeknockout.com

------
boksiora
It was about time

------
kilimchoi
how do you plan to filter spammy links?

~~~
patrickaljord
Isn't that what upvote and downvote is for? Spam gets downvoted and good
products upvoted. Automatic spam detection can help too, there are plenty of
tools that can help here.

------
ex3ndr
Will ProductHunt shutdown OpenHunt with power of law?

------
purans
+100

