

In 1 Sentence Explain... - diesellaws
http://1sentence.com/
1 Sentence is an experimental concept in simplified explanations. Would love to get your feedback.
======
corin_
Based on a very short look around I can't see this really being interesting
att all.

However, here's an idea I would like. The same website, fully moderated to the
point that answers are not community-contributed, but sought out by website
staff. For examplee, "In one sentence, explain what's great about SF for tech
companies" you might reach out for an answer from pg, and a couple of other
similar people.

And doesn't have to be all tech, or even all well-known. For example one on
there was "Explain why Justin Bieber is popular". The answer "because teenage
girls exist" is entirely worthless, however perhaps there is someone in the
music industry who could give an actual interesting thought, in one sentence,
on that topic.

~~~
WordSkill
I understand where Corin is coming from but his well-meaning advice completely
misses the potential. The question "Explain why Justin Bieber is popular" and
the answer "because teenage girls exist" are both BRILLIANT - the fact that
Corin can't see the point of them doesn't mean that there is anything wrong
with him, it just means that he is out of tune with the type of humor that
most normal people enjoy.

A site like this is a novelty, potentially an extremely popular one. It will
never be a storehouse of proper knowledge, like a sort of mini-StackExchange,
full of the sort of things that Corin might consider "worthwhile" - think
logically, what would be the point of "reaching out" to Paul Graham and other
worthies ... for single sentence answers!

Seriously, this thing's true destiny is to be a dynamic stage for funny
thoughts and funnier answers, and in that it has tremendous potential,
tremendous value.

My advice would to look beyond the constraints of your own idea of what
1sentence will be, ease off on deleting answers, let your users lead the way
and ignore the advice of techies who can't see the simple beauty of your idea
- these are the type of people who orignally wrote off Twitter with grand,
huffy statements about not wanting to know what other people were having for
breakfast, completely failing to realize that something important was shifting
in how people communicate.

Well done.

~~~
corin_
I know you weren't making this connection directly for me, but just for the
record I have actually been a big fan of Twitter for quite a while ;)

I do see your points, but and I'm not saying my suggestions would make it a
more popular site, or give it a better chance of making money, or a better
chance of lasting longer. Simply that it would make it a site that I would
enjoy more.

And obviously I can see that my Bieber example was humour, and my point wasn't
disagreeing with that, simply that a site for of actually insightful answers
would, to me and to many others (not saying the majority) would be far more
interesting, than a site full of random humoour.

Would it be a waste to get pg to write just a sentence? Perhaps, but if so
that means I have picked a bad example. I've seen many examples in the past of
something quite complex being explained in an easy-to-understand one seentence
way, which would have left me wanting a lot more had it been in my area of
expertise, but in fact I much enjoyed.

Here's an example, the P = NP problem. Sure, some people will enjoy reading
pages and pages about this, but others not so much. A well-worded one sentance
on why people care about it could therefore be interesting.

Add that to many other topics, and essentially you're building a database that
lets people learn a very little about a wide range of areas. What was the
actual logic behind schrodinger's cat, how do birds fly, why is moore's law
the case?

I would enjoy browsing through that, I think. And, hopefully, some of them
would be "I already knew that", some would be "I don't really care", some
"that's quite interesting" and some "hmm, I need to go find out more about
this".

So really I wasn't trying to slightly alter this concept, I was pitching a
totally differeent purpose of an almost identical website, that in my very
subjective view would be better.

------
hugh3
The problem is that you don't get a good one-sentence explanation, you get a
_bunch_ of one-sentence explanations of widely different quality, frequently
contradictory.

I'm not sure this would help anyone understand anything. But to test it: I
currently don't understand the Diffe-Helman Key Exchange, so I'm gonna read
the explanations.

[pause]

 _Error establishing database connection_. Well, so much for that experiment.

~~~
diesellaws
In one sentence explain why the server is down: Error establishing database
connection. (it worked! lol)

But seriously though, thank you for your thoughts. I did not expect it to be
such a hit on HN, and the website was thrown together in a couple of days.

In response to this: "you get a bunch of one-sentence explanations of widely
different quality, frequently contradictory."

You are spot on. That is the world we live in - often widely different quality
and frequently contradictory [in everything]. For a social experiment, to see
how many people respond in a helpful way vs silly way (commenting is open -
when the site isn't being hammered by HN's community) was one of the pieces of
information I wanted to find out.

The other is to show that no one sentence will ever work for all, and every
sentence may be helpful to someone yet annoying to another.

But the main reason 1Sentence was born: It is currently not easy to track down
one sentence explanations of a topic without travelling the net hoping someone
has written it. Sometimes all you need is one sentence to explain a product to
another person or even yourself. So in that regard, it worked.

I appreciate your feedback and thoughts, thank you!

Diesel Laws

~~~
diesellaws
We have moved it to our Cloud VPS so it should now cope with the traffic.
Thanks, Diesel.

------
eevilspock
In one sentence explain how asinine 1sentence.com is.

[http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-how-asinine-
thi...](http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-how-asinine-this-website-
is/)

Added by yours truly.

~~~
brokentone
Very nice. I think the website itself provided the best answer when I visited
the page: <http://cl.ly/8wTr> (unedited: scout's honor, and you can tell by
the pixels)

~~~
diesellaws
Lol, yes that is a funny sentence. however, some people have found it as a
good tool to get useful explanations too.

In regards to the database error, that's just because I was unprepared and did
not expect 10,000+ hits in one night to a small server. We have since moved it
to our VPS server, will see how that goes.

Thanks for the feedback though :)

------
prof
Is one sentance supposed to make it easier to understand? Because, for example
the "explain programming"-answers made it more abstract and I guess people who
does not know it would not understand it after "bla bla set of instructions
bla bla".

Making explanations smaller means higer abstractions which means it is often
harder to understand.

Edit: I do like small explanations. Like simple-wikipedia small.

~~~
diesellaws
"Is one sentence supposed to make it easier to understand?" - To many = yes.

In my eyes, this would be perfect to get an explanation of new trends (e.g. a
year ago it may have been this: <http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-
social-media/>)

But overall it's an experiment, and I didn't think many would use it (Until I
posted it here: Thanks HN community).

So I will be seeing how it goes over the next few weeks, and see what the data
suggests - but so far, I would say many love the simplicity of one sentence
explanations.

Cheers for your feedback!

------
hasenj
I like the concept. Has the potential to be very addictive! Needs some
moderation though, I see spams.

------
fosk
The best question is "In one sentence explain why this hit 1st page on HN"

[http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-why-this-
hit-1s...](http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-why-this-hit-1st-page-
on-hn/)

------
diesellaws
1 Sentence is an experimental concept in simplified explanations. Thanks for
trying it out!

~~~
mcphilip
Nice site! One suggestion, remove the "In one sentence explain" from the
posts. My eyes get tired of seeing that over and over...

~~~
diesellaws
Thanks mcphilip. Agreed. I will look into that. Thanks for the suggestion.

------
zwieback
I like it - a good destination for a few minutes of diversion and good to hone
your technical writing skills.

It would be useful to have different ways of scoring answers, separate buttons
for "funny", "insightful" or "clear".

~~~
diesellaws
Thanks zwieback!

It's very limited in functionality currently, and it was built as a side
project to <http://barkles.com> \- I won't be putting much time into
1Sentence, but that is a great suggestion - and if there is a way to implement
it with Disqus comments I will surely consider it.

Thanks!

------
rimantas
Next move: 140characters. Sure, constrains are good and often lead to
creativity but arbitrary constraints… I am not sure about.

~~~
diesellaws
Thanks rimantas - we are working on a 200 character limit side by side
debating platform - its currently in private Alpha testing and working well so
far.

<http://barkles.com>

------
bennesvig
Did this idea come from Reddit?

~~~
jh3
I was thinking the same thing. The first thing that popped into my head was
r/explainlikeimfive.

