
On blog templates: designing is thinking; every detail deserves to be thought about - phil
http://daringfireball.net/2007/03/blank_slate
======
wyday
This article can be expanded to include forum software, namely phpBB. Who
really needs, or more importantly, reads the list of all the active users in
the forum? But the users of the phpBB software consistently leave in the
unnecessary junk.

All in all, he accurately articulated a wider design laziness which can even
be seen in commercial sites (opera.com vs. mozilla.com or reddit vs.
news.ycombinator). I know that this parenthetical suggestion will get me
modded down, but where's the line between copying a proven good idea and
unwillingness to take a risk on an original design?

~~~
Alex3917
Blog design is a lot different than social systems design. When designing a
blog you mainly have to worry about useability and aesthetics. Once you get
the design of your blog just the way you like it, you never have to change it.

Whereas when you are designing a community you are trying to get maximize the
quality of discussion, which is a function of both the people and the way they
interact because of the systemic design. Once everyone knows what everyone
else thinks the community begins to get stale, and to fix that (if seen as a
problem) you need to redesign your site with the goal of either changing the
mix of participants or changing the way they interact.

While news.ycombinator may visually look the same as Reddit, it changes both
the people and the way they interact (through different algorithms). That is
probably why I've almost completely stopped reading Reddit since this site
launched, even though at first glance they seem similar.

~~~
wyday
I disagree with your two main points:

1\. "Once you get the design of your blog just the way you like it, you never
have to change it."

What if the design is just usable enough as to not draw any complaints? No
complaints means perfect (or good enough) design, right? But what if, in
constantly improving your design, you attract an audience that passed on your
site initially. How would you know if you just let the blog go flat?

2\. "Once everyone knows what everyone else thinks ... you need to redesign
your site ..."

If the community is such that the people only contribute trite truisms, I
don't think a redesign will do much to rectify the problem. I wouldn't know,
though; I've never been to a site where everyone knows what the other users
are thinking.

~~~
Alex3917
I agree with you on point one.

As for point two, I suppose you never know what each individual is thinking.
However, the aggregated wisdom tends to be fairly stable over time for any
given topic.

For example, if the topic of Apple comes up on Digg then I pretty much know
what the comments are going to say without having to click on them. If one
person posts an especially insightful comment, and others recognize it as
such, then chances are someone else will repost that comment in future threads
about Apple. More and more people come to believe whatever is said, until
someone else comes up with a new paradigm for Apple worship. So the discourse
evolves, but slowly and in predictable patterns.

Certainly any given individual's opinions are constantly in flux, but what
matters isn't the ideas of each individual brings to the system, but rather
the range of diversity and novelty of thought present in the system as a
whole.

------
aglarond
The last line of the article, "If you start with nothing, youre forced to
think about everything.", really sums-up for me one of the real benefits of a
startup: you can start from scratch. There are no legacy systems to integrate,
no "historical awkwardness" (well, it's that way because it's always been that
way...), and no politics. You get a blank slate with a startup - every aspect
can be thought about and done right (for all values of "right" that are valid
at the moment the thinking is done). Time to innovate...

