

8 days. 8,000 forums - tipiirai
http://moot.it/blog/release/8-days-8000-forums.html

======
pibefision
I don't believe in forums as a SaaS.

Wordpress growth, in a sense, it is because it is open source. You can have
your own version, and also, if you prefer, they can host your blog.

A forums is a different kind of service, takes a lot of time and effort to
build a community, and if this guys dissapear in 2 or 3 months, years, etc, it
is a big loss.

I prefer the path that Discourse is taking. It's software is open source &
they are experts in hosting it. Like wordpress. So, if my community finally is
growing, I can think on host everything by myself.

Also, I love redis, I use it a lot, but don't understand why it is a key
driver to explain the product proposition.

~~~
stevoski
I _do_ believe in forums as a SaaS.

Yes, there are risks, as you pointed out. There are also benefits.

The forum service provider rolls out updates

The forum service provider applies security patches

The forum service provider keeps the service running 24 hours, and gets woken
up in the middle of the night to fix unexpected crashes, not me.

\--

I try to outsource anything I can. And forums is one of them.

~~~
buro9
I run some very large forums, and the reason I'm now making a forum PaaS/SaaS
play is precisely because of the above.

Just Google for "Powered by vBulletin 3.8" to see how many hundred thousands
of forums are running old unpatched versions of forum software.

Most people who run forums are into the topic of the forum, not becoming a
sysadmin.

------
buro9
Very impressive.

We have a startup ( <http://microco.sm/> ) in this very space (hosted forums)
and will be launching our alpha in the next two weeks. Our design rushes are
pretty close to this (though we haven't updated the linked site in ages it
feels) and we love that others are innovating in this space and feel that
they've also spotted and validated a need for simpler, more engaging forums.

I really like the look of this, one of the much stronger offerings to have
emerged in this space.

Will be good to see how we all do in a year or so, and which we way pivot and
the changes in our respective business models.

Right now this looks like more of a Disqus rival than anything, but I'm sure
they will do well with things like forums for really small communities such as
housing associations and knitting groups, etc.

~~~
tipiirai
Thank you! Welcome on board!

------
cantbecool
It is really snappy and nice, however I still don't understand why there isn't
nested threads. It's such a pain trying to navigate around trying to figure
out what is in reply to what.

~~~
tipiirai
Moot has a concept of "paths" which allow you to setup unlimited discussion
hierarchies. All parent paths contain all the moots from the children.

We're putting together more docs to help cover these concepts soon!

Single thread (which we call a moot) doesn't support threading. If you try to
browse bigger threads here in HN or in Reddit you'll soon realize that you'll
get lost. Especially when you come back to the site it's impossible to know
what has changed. We think discussions should be chronological.

Later we're adding support for replying to replies (one level only) and a way
to branch from the main topic.

~~~
raldi
_> If you try to browse bigger threads here in HN or in Reddit you'll soon
realize that you'll get lost._

That never happens to me, especially on reddit, where threads are collapsible.
How do you end up lost?

 _> Especially when you come back to the site it's impossible to know what has
changed._

No it's not. There's a reddit gold feature for that.

~~~
JLehtinen
You end up lost when you see there's a new reply on a thread you've been
following (post count is 67 but yesterday it was 66) and then you go trying to
find it for about five minutes. You end up re-reading about 30% of all the
posts until you finally find what you were looking for. Repeat until you've
read the entire thread 20 times.

But that's not a bad experience compared to when you go read a threaded
conversation for the first time when there's over 50 posts — the whole thing
is just unreadable. Add to this that even the most technical people can rarely
reply to the right post 100% of the time.

~~~
raldi
The reddit gold feature I mentioned directly addresses what your first
paragraph describes. New comments since your last visit are highlighted.

And I don't understand your second paragraph; it never happens to me, but that
doesn't mean it's not a problem. Could you help me understand why you find
these threads unreadable? Do you make use of the "collapse thread" button?

------
DanBC
Have you sorted out the legal issues with the name?

Because I'd be wary about using something under a C&D with such a clear case.

~~~
tipiirai
Yes we have. Mr Poole "contacted" us:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20408037>

~~~
DanBC
It was a very simple question - have you sorted out the legal issues or not?

His lawyers sent you a C&D; you responded to that C&D and now you've launched.

Considering he's been known as moot since 2003, and is known by millions of
people as moot, and has a strong link to online discussion forums, I'd think
he has an excellent case.

Since, apart from his name, the primary meaning of moot is "closed to debate"
(not "open to debate"; you're welcome to provide examples of "moot point"
where the meaning is "open to debate" and not "closed to debate") it seems
like a weird choice of name.

~~~
tipiirai
We've sorted it out. We found out that there is no case.

~~~
idm
As DanBC pointed out, "moot" means the opposite of "open to debate." Honestly,
I think Moot is kindof silly for sending the letter in the first place, but
he's totally right that your name (moot.it) will cause confusion. Add me to
the list of people who thought "Moot.it" meant "Poole."

If Moot were trademarked by 4chan (now there's a laughable proposition), there
really would be a case - and a pretty strong one, at that. As it is, I imagine
you're right that Moot has no real case against Moot.it, but it also sounds
like the letter made no specific C&D demands.

I imagine your product can rise above this based on its merit, but you gotta
acknowledge the subtle trolling inherent in the name. I understand why you
can't publicly acknowledge this, but it's there anyway.

~~~
tipiirai
There is definitely a subtte trolling factor on our name, no reason to hide
it. But it does not affect to the fact that moot.it is a damn good name for a
product like ours. In case we get popular (which might be the case considering
the title of this Hacker News post) this trolling factor will decease.

Speaking strictly about the branding I really think it doesn't matter whether
the inherent meaning is closed or open. Product naming is an art form and it
doesn't have to be realistic.

I hope we can use Moot successfully on our issue tracker

<http://moot.it/issues>

So we can "close the debate" on those moots :)

------
iampims

        We're experiencing problems and this post was not saved.
        Please copy the post to clipboard, reload and try again.
        Sorry, we're fixing this!
    

Redis issue?

~~~
tipiirai
Yup. We're fixing this :) We still have some hiccups there since it's still
beta.

Did you manage to post it again? Can you please describe us how this happened
here

<http://moot.it/issues>

------
swang
Are there any active forums besides the main moot.it/forum? I tried going to
relatively common keywords and most are just people kinda squatting on them
during the initial landgrab.

~~~
tipiirai
Like we say; we've been up only 8 days. Our forum is currently the most active
one and you'll probably get the best picture there. Here is a playground forum
where you can fool around freely:

<http://moot.it/demos/forum.html>

~~~
asciimo
This is hot. However, the "Log in and post" button is inactive out for me.
Shouldn't that immediately launch a login/register interface? Otherwise, I
have to drag my mouse all the way over to the "log in" link.

~~~
courtneycouch0
It shouldn't be inactive if you have types a post. If, after typing something,
it's still inactive then that is a bug! Please let us know what browser you
are on in that case and we'll get that fixed.

------
kaeruct
Too bad this isn't open source, it's the only thing stopping me from using it.
Probably gonna use discourse instead

~~~
tipiirai
This is indeed the case right now. We're open sourcing big chunks of code
later once they are nicely packaged and documented.

------
phrasemix
I really like the fact that Moot seems to handle both forum-style posts and
on-page comments. As the owner of a content site, I really want both. I've
even gone so far as to try to hack Disqus to work as a forum.

If there was an easy import feature for Disqus threads, I'd probably switch
right over.

~~~
tipiirai
We are aware of this urgent need. You are not alone in this. And you can be
sure this is exactly what we are working on.

------
davidascher
Impressive performance and clean design. /me interested.

I don't understand the need to claim such a broad copyright license on content
submitted.

"When providing us with content or posting content on Moot’s site or related
third-party sites, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual,
irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right AND
LICENSE to exercise any and all copyright, trademark, publicity, and database
rights you have in the content, in any media known now or in the future."

The "Why do we have this clause" link doesn't feel like it answers that
either.

Also, the "Following is guaranteed" bit needs work. It sounds good, but is
legally worthless, I expect.

~~~
pekk
If you run a forum, on what legal basis are you allowed to continue using what
user has posted? Doesn't this represent a continuous existential risk for a
forum, that such rights will be claimed?

------
lukeholder
I think there is a massive market for an open source version of a service like
this or disqus. An admin panel for management, and a embeddable javascript app
in pages.

I wonder if www.discourse.org will ever look at making an embeddable js
component.

~~~
ScottWhigham
Whenever you say, "I think there is a massive market", you don't follow up
with "for an open source version" haha. :)

------
davidw
One of the reasons I really like Google Groups is that it lets me treat
something as a mailing list. By and large, I want to use an email client for
serious discussions, not a 'forum' thing. Adding this functionality would be
super cool.

~~~
tipiirai
Moot is primarly meant for websites and the goal is to keep discussion and the
users on the site. This will make users come back and potentia.ly increase
traffic on the site.

We're launching email notifications next week.

~~~
Shish2k
> the goal is to keep discussion and the users on the site. This will make
> users come back

Back when I first got online and only had one forum I was interested in, this
was true - but it really doesn't scale. Trying to keep up with even 3 active
forums by visiting each in turn is painful. Since then, I've pretty much
ignored any information source that doesn't have either RSS or email feeds,
since I can multiplex hundreds of those with no problem :P

(For a more average-joe version of this, note how facebook has largely
replaced independent forums and IRC - people are lazy, and going out of their
way to check an external site on a daily basis is much more work than clicking
a "like" button and having that site's news become part of their standard
routine)

~~~
webwanderings
You are absolutely right hence these forums are going to constantly suffer, or
they'd be taken in by marketers trying to make a buck over filthy Ads. I don't
think people can have serious discussions on such forum platforms who try to
appeal to everyone equally.

------
nwh
A free service with no advertising and a very limited business model?

I fail to see why anybody would want to build a community on a service that
will disappear in a few months.

~~~
tipiirai
We're going to have paid features such as single sign on or private posts on
top of our core offering. You can read more about our plans here

<http://moot.it/about/>

~~~
khet
The parent's argument still holds true.

Just because you "plan" to make money does not mean you _will_ make money.

~~~
JLehtinen
This is true of any service anywhere, even regardless of whether the company
makes money or not. Btw, any ideas of a good replacement for Google Reader?

------
parfe
Not related to 4chan in any way

[http://betabeat.com/2012/11/4chan-founder-moot-sends-
cease-d...](http://betabeat.com/2012/11/4chan-founder-moot-sends-cease-desist-
letter-to-startup-moot-it/)

Although my curiosity certainly supports Poole's position. I assumed this was
moot monetizing forums.

~~~
lnanek2
Ha, yes, I thought it was going to be him from the name as well, until I went
to the site and found out otherwise. I suppose moot is a word, though, not
just a name. Although the only time I heard it used using the discussion
definition instead of the more common one was a Tolkien book or something.
Maybe they aren't from the US and people outside the US use it this way.

------
devgutt
3 years to launch? It seems a lot of time without the user's consent.
Although, nice work, very consistent.

~~~
tipiirai
Yup. We felt a little crazy at some point.

Thanks!

------
peteforde
If I launched a photo sharing site called Laughing Squid, a large percentage
of my ideal demographic would hate me.

If I put a lot of work into something, why would I blow my own foot off for
cheap publicity?

~~~
tipiirai
?

~~~
peteforde
Not sure what you're ?ing about.

------
Kequc
How does the embedding work, does it fetch html or does it fetch data and then
build the html with javascript? When you navigate within the forum I imagine
it does the same and loads in place. How close am I?

~~~
tipiirai
Very close. It fetches JSON data from api.moot.it, generates HTML with
JavaScript and places it on your site. And when you load another page it does
the same thing, but only for a smaller portion of the DOM.

~~~
Kequc
Is it necessary for a user to log in separately on every forum or how do you
keep people authenticated?

------
film42
Moot says they use JSON-RPC because a standard REST framework is not suitable.

Can anyone shed some light on how big of a performance boost JSON-RPC provides
when dealing with things like notifications?

~~~
tipiirai
JSON-RPC is not about performance. A RPC protocol just makes more sense for
full-duplex communication where both sending and receiving end can send
messages to each other at any time. REST is inherently a request / response
pattern and is not designed to build these kinds of "real time" applications.
It's about your system architecture. Better to use the right tools for the
job.

------
ritonlajoie
What happened to this startup 2 years ago that made the same thing ? They
received an impressive amount of $$$, and now I don't even remember their
name.. any idea ?

------
makeee
Any plans to allow sites to use their existing authentication/identity system,
rather then require users to signup with moot to participate in the forum?

~~~
courtneycouch0
SSO is coming for you to be able to integrate into your authentication system.

------
vfl0
I really like the features offered (especially the realtime updates), and how
you can customise it. Would prefer to host it on my own website though.

~~~
tipiirai
Go for it! That's the whole point of Moot.

~~~
lingben
embedding is not the same as hosting

------
spyder
What about SEO? It should be important for a forum. I found most of the
smaller forums that i know with google search.

------
entropie
Is there any internationalization planed?

Edit: forgot to say: i'ts awesome!

~~~
tipiirai
Thanks!

Absolutely. It's on our short term roadmap. Coming out in next 2 weeks. It's a
highly requested feature. Some discussion about it:

[http://moot.it/forum/#!/open-word#additional-language-
suppor...](http://moot.it/forum/#!/open-word#additional-language-support)

Here is a rough draft of RTL (right to left) support.

<http://moot.it/demos/rtl.html>

~~~
entropie
You guys rock, really.

------
DonPellegrino
I'd pay to be able to host my own.

