
Show HN: Quetree – A Q&A site that is tree-based and hierarchical - schwanray
https://www.quetree.com
======
jv22222
1) Well done for shipping! That is a huge achievement!

2) (For future projects) IMHO It's not advisable to work for "years" on a
project without showing it to end users. It's basically a big guess. For best
results make sure to start building your audience from the start. Even before
you code anything. When you pick an idea to focus on, if you can't build some
kind of list of people interested in it just from a landing page with a "Join
the waitlist" button, then it's a big sign that the idea might not be the best
or that you don't have the capacity to market it.

3) Your key premise is that people care about hierarchical Q&A. There is no
true way to know this without asking people. So, again, ask them at the
beginning of the "years" before writing a line of code.

4) Your site boils the ocean. It's almost impossible to build up a user base
with a site that is not focused around a niche. For example, Stack Overflow's
first version was focused on the topic of Tech/Coding Q&A and then they rolled
out sub sites. So, your best bet will be to pick a specific niche to focus on
and then when you grow and build that topic, then start to move to other
topics. That is a tried and proven strategy. (Also, it's only by picking a
niche that you know WHO to market to and what marketing strategy to use).

5) Your main marketing message is based around "features" but very few end
users care about features they care about how your product will make their
life better and how your product will make them a better person. So, your
marketing copy should be about "benefits" not "features".

Please read this set of free ebooks for more info on that:
[https://copyhackers.com/get-it-now](https://copyhackers.com/get-it-now)

6) Again, well done for shipping! If you ever work on another project I would
recommend to pick something you can ship in < 3 months, even better just test
it with mockups and a landing page before building anything. The sooner you
can get feedback the sooner you know if you're moving in the right direction.

I hope that this feedback is taken in the spirit it is meant, which is just to
be helpful.

Good luck with your project!

~~~
nsomaru
The call to action to download the copyhackers book doesn't work for me. Any
other way of getting it?

~~~
jv22222
1) Go to: [https://copyhackers.com/](https://copyhackers.com/)

2) Hover over "New here"

3) Click copywriting ebooks.

~~~
copyhackers
Or email me! joanna at copyhackers dot com. happy to provide ebooks to the HN
community! and thanks. :)

------
vortico
Community building is the most noble project on the Internet, and this is a
unique attempt to organize it further. Communities, not software or commerce
or entertainment, is what the Internet was motivated from in the 90's and will
be the most remembered aspect in 50 years, so it is important to create
experimental community harbors like these to possibly incubate future massive
projects.

However, I am curious why you chose two features from which to derive your
community software.

Voting: This has been demonstrated by major websites to form "mob opinions",
hide individuality, and discourage of unpopular/unoriginal ideas. It is
somewhat agreed by Hacker News members that voting should represent quality of
comments. But as the size of a website approaches infinity (like Reddit, or
Facebook comments with "liking"), this type of culture breaks down, so voting
is eventually only used to game the system to promote comments that follow
your personal opinion. Differing opinions are a beautiful aspect of humankind,
and they are lost when a comment's score is used to make it visible in an
unequal manner to other comments. Additionally, voting has little correlation
with the effort that goes into a comment. A one-word reply is just as likely
to have the same score as a wiki-like hand-typed article and will therefore be
artificially promoted to the same level. I believe that if you're running an
online news website, sure, absolutely promote "top" content. If it's a
community forum, give people an equal voice.

Threading/hierarchy: Human conversation has not and will not change as a
result of Internet community software. Hierarchy is unnatural, chronology is
natural. If the goal of a community is to generate "answers" to "questions",
sometimes this unnatural feature is necessary, but use caution and don't over-
hierarchy-ize the organization. Having a "Support" and "Not support" feature
like in your video demo adds to the paperwork of posting an answer while not
offering much benefit, and it seems a bit O(n^2) to me.

~~~
schwanray
Thank you for your very intelligent, thought provoking and inspiring comment.
Building a great community around knowledge is the dream. And I really
appreciate your curiousities!

About voting: we really thought really hard about this very hard thing and it
is a very hard problem to solve. As you said earlier, we need more
experimental communities to really be sure as there may be limited
unadulterated evidence as to its effectiveness currently. But we looked at
review sites as a guide - they seem to work pretty good. So the argument is:
if people can help each other choose products or services they could
theoretically also help with choosing ideas. But we know its not as easy as
that.

We are starting by catering to the good members, those with only good
intentions and not to game the system, and then to worry about how the bad or
unsuspecting ones can spoil it for everyone. So given such a group of good
members we thought it more beneficial for everyone if each person could make
it easier for the next one by making a good choice and voting up. It would be
better to use their time and efforts. This is contrasting to where no one is
trusted and each person has to start from the beginning and go through all
choices thus not benefitting from the time and thoughts spent by those who
went through the same thing before.

But you hit at a deeper problem here which is really really hard to answer:
how do you make something popular while giving equal importance to every other
thing. By giving something precedence, e.g. calling it a better apple, aren’t
you by definition making all the other apples worser? And if you call all of
them equal then do you do justice to the already ripe ones?

But this problem really kept us up at nights: what will happen to the the poor
and specially bright genius who can achieve transcendental insights but is
against huge hoards who simply “don’t get it”. Because it is indeed a
beautiful aspect of humankind. And that brings us to your last point - namely
the supporting, conflicting feature. That one was designed with this very
thing in mind. So that the inspired can create a conflicting idea to what has
been accepted by the majority - and those who see that there is a conflicting
answers to the prevailing accepted one, will hopefully take a closer look then
and then spend more time deciding. Those who voted earlier on the prevailing
one can change their minds and vote on the new insightful one and slowly the
acceptance rating will sway to the new one as will the ranking and medals (it
is all implemented already). A big part of Quetree is identify what is the
popularly accepted so that we at least know if that needs to change and have a
shot at changing it. Quetree is incepted to may be help change what is popular
to take us closer to a world where the majority is wiser and more adaptive.

But the supporting and conflicting feature is not meant to quadratically
complicate answering - it is served as an extra feature to be used when needed
as exampled above but is safely tucked away hidden, and have to be expanded to
use.

To address your other good point about hierarchy, that one is truly
experimental. The idea is to encourage the path towards hierarchy-izing ideas
and may be even over-hierarchy-izing them over over-hierarchy-izing men and
kings that us humans have been doing naturally for eons. If we can have a
hierarchy of ideas we can constructly move them around (ideal mobilization vs
social mobilization ;), they won’t mind nor fight back, unlike the kings or
authoritative figures who hold on for dear life.

I like how your brain thinks and I suspect we could’ve hung around and have
long philosophical conversations that would be both enjoyable and inspiring.
Please keep in touch, thanks and have a great day!

------
vfinn
I think we need something like this, but I'm not sure if this is the answer.
This type of tree-like Q&A would be good for problem solving, e.g. "How to
save the oceans?" -> "How to save the oceans from plastics?" -> "How to
harvest the plastics from the oceans?" -> "How to use AI to sort out different
plastic types?" (obviously I can't sketch here the multitude of branches I'd
like). You know, wiki for problem solving. There would be branches for whether
we could burn the plastics, how much energy would it take to burn the
plastics, and whether we should ship the plastics eventually to shore and how?
Ideally we would have mechanism to reward the best answers, and in the end
invite the whole of global community to solve these problems whether it is in
terms of economics, chemistry or engineering. Dream on :).

~~~
schwanray
Thank you so much for that as it is really well thought out and it is so
refreshing to find someone instantly "get it"! I would like to personally
invite you to create those questions sometime in Quetree and then we can
figure out how to invite the whole global community to solve them! But please
do keep in touch as it is very valuable to have people aligned with our vision
from the very beginning! With help from people like you we hope to reach out
to a broader audience and once we do, who better to help run things than those
who were there from the start. Thanks again for your valuable input and hope
to communicate with you again soon!

~~~
vfinn
Thanks! I thought what I said was pretty trivial, but why I "got it" so
quickly was that I had a similar idea myself. Sure, I'd be interested to hear
more, at least.

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joebo
Nice work. A few thoughts came to mind after reading other comments.

I wonder how the tree concept works when responses are long or short. It seems
to me that short would encourage more of a "ping pong" style thread which may
be desirable in a tree form instead of a long-form question and reply.

It may be interesting and enjoyable to contribute to a site if there was a
short length constraint placed on the reply. For sake of example, let's say it
was 140 characters. That would force replies to be concise and give more of an
anchor for others to jump off on in the conversation.

It could also make it more of a competition -- who can succinctly reply to the
question with the most clarity?

Lastly, I think this could go a long way towards mitigating the curse of
knowledge when people communicate. I see this and experience this when I
participate in technical forums. It's easy to use jargon or advanced topics
that the person may or may not understand. The tree approach gives a simple
way for a follow-up question around the topic.

You may even consider tying this into the "five whys" which is a common
questioning approach

~~~
schwanray
Thank you kindly Joebo and thank you for your awesome ideas. In fact we have
thought about this exact thing, and there is a set height to the answer window
to encourage short answers beyond which the users will have to scroll down and
there is a page numbering system to show you how many pages there are/are
left. We didn't go all the way and put a hard limit though but it is a very
interesting idea and will see if others like it as well. The idea of the
competition for succinct bullseye answers is also awesome! Since answers can
be voted up and those with long answers requiring the scrolling may not be
read as much or questioned more, there is an indirect route to this end effect
currently implemented but may need improving. Please check it out and give
feedback if possible.

Ah the "curse of knowledge"! That is such a bulls eye, home run, out of the
park, spot on, accurate assessment and perfect read on your part! The curse of
knowledge alienates most of the brightest minds from the rest us which is
really sad and simple access to structured questioning could help remedy that
age old problem.

As far as I remember the "five whys" should end in a feeling. Right now I feel
really energized and inspired by your input since I now know that there are
those out there like you who I really need and hope will get directly involved
in helping this thing grow in the right direction! Do please keep in touch
will ya!?

------
schwanray
Thank you for checking out our new site. We have worked really hard on this
for a very long time (years) to bring you something very new and exciting.
Included a video tour before posting here to HN so that you can view some of
the main features without having to sign up. But please do sign up if you like
as your engagement and opinion is highly valued! Thanks and have a great day!

~~~
mirimir
It seems like a useful approach. But there's so little content so far that
it's hard to tell. Could you perhaps say more about how this improves on Quora
etc? Also, how will you handle moderation and verification?

Edit: I see that, as with Quora, users retain copyright to all of their
content, and grant perpetual license to the site. Presumably, then, Quora
users could migrate their answers to Quetree. But I'm not sure how
corresponding questions could be handled.

~~~
schwanray
Thank you very much mirimir for your profound comment. There are some
differences with Quora - more emphasis on knowledge rather than celebrities to
follow, less noise, discover new questions with new knowledge gain... There is
a points system with medals and trophies for moderation and verification (also
followup questions :) (Had the idea before Quora back in 2008). Please keep in
touch through the contact-us page! You're awesome!

------
raleighm
Very cool - congrats on getting it in shape to present to the world.

Similar comment to others, but the visitor is left to wonder what a really
excellent use of the site might look like. The thread w/ the largest number of
posts[0] doesn't really get very far. The thread in the demo video is a bit
hard to understand. If "B" were known by the OP, why would he ask a question
as simple as 2+5? If "B" were unknown, wouldn't the question be what is "B" in
the relevant domain (whatever domain that is)?

The video seems to show how the site _might_ work, which has me interested.
What would have me signing up would be a video showing how the site _did_ work
to really move some discussion forward.

Congrats again getting it out in the world. Best wishes as you continue to
refine it.

[0]
[https://www.quetree.com/branchview/v67n](https://www.quetree.com/branchview/v67n)

~~~
schwanray
This is what is so great about HN and the members here. You even went through
the trouble of finding the longest thread. Thank you very much for your
valuable input and for your kind wishes! Will try the best to refine the
soonest and best we can. Please keep in touch through quetree.com/contact-us.

God bless HN and all its great members!

Thanks again and have a great day!

------
pythonik
Well done.

I have been thinking about commenting and debate platforms lately, mainly two
aspects

a) How to map comments/arguments in a way that the system by design encourages
healthy debate and at the same time remain very intuitive to read (and
contribute) for not so regular user For example: I am big fan of
[http://en.arguman.org/](http://en.arguman.org/) is great work in mapping
argument but might not be easy regular naive internet users

b) How can platform ensure that majority which may be is in favor of certain
side (of argument), it doesn't influence rational argument. I am referring to
trolls. Example: [http://kialo.com/](http://kialo.com/) is a good
implementation but arguments can be pulled to one's side by sheer majority.

------
CGamesPlay
I think you should focus on populating this with questions yourself. Building
a community is a chicken-and-egg problem and you need to have content to get
people to start to contribute questions. It will also serve as a great way for
others to understand what the site is about.

Good luck!

~~~
schwanray
That is very thoughtful and helpful advice, much appreciated! Thank you :)

------
macspoofing
I'm struggling to understand what you're going for and how this hierarchical
Q&A format is supposed to work.

1) Your example in the video is too contrived.

2) I haven't seen one Q&A thread that actually illustrates your concept ...
meaning others aren't getting it either.

~~~
schwanray
You were very right macspoofing, the video was watched to the end by only a
handful of the people and have been removed. The video was a bad idea in
hindsight since those who could've got a feel for the sight by using it for
themselves and then given an opinion about it never did. And now that chance
to get the smart people here to do that is gone. But thanks for your input and
have a great day!

------
kyriakos
Mobile version in 2018 should be a priority. I'm reading HN on mobile and even
though I like your idea I may forget what's all about by the time I switch to
desktop later today.

------
glifchits
I was just thinking that something similar to this would be really interesting
for reading/peer-reviewing scientific papers. Scientific knowledge is built
atop of claims made in previous papers, each claim having its own statistical
strength. It would be awesome if each footnote in a paper was not just a
citation to another publication, but a link to the first time that claim was
made, with its p-value and sample size prominently displayed.

~~~
schwanray
Thank you so much for this awesome post! We did think about scientific papers
and journals but are not phd level scientists ourselves. We thought more in
terms about how hard it is for journal writers to spread their knowledge to a
broader audience. Your point is very interesting and novel. Really wish we
could discuss further about it and possibly implement it! Please get in touch!

------
explainplease
Looking at
[https://www.quetree.com/branchview/v67n](https://www.quetree.com/branchview/v67n),
the only difference from a typical, threaded forum appears to be the "Q" or
"A" label on each post. Am I missing something?

------
samirm
Awesome idea, however the example video is too simplistic and abstract.

~~~
schwanray
Yes agreed, and it has been removed. Thanks and have a great day!

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gitgud
Interesting project, so each question can spawn sub questions, is that the
tree?

Also looks good, but it's very hard to use on mobile.

~~~
schwanray
Thank you kindly! Yes hopefully can build a mobile app soon! The current
design did not lend itself easily to mobile screens.

~~~
adrianmsmith
I think you should be careful of “perfect is the enemy of the good”.

I’m sure a mobile app would be the perfect solution. Nevertheless, until that
materializes, it would be worth investing a day or two to mobile CSS.

It won’t be as good, but for people wanting to use your product now, it will
be sufficient, and will be the difference between them using it and not.

------
kwhitefoot
It seems odd to me that so many questions are answered by referring one to a
video. For me at least this simply means that I won't ever know the answer
because video is a very inefficient way of presenting simple information and I
don't feel inclined to use the time.

~~~
schwanray
Not sure which answers you are referring to because there only about 3 or
videos in the site. May be you were talking about the demo and the help
videos. The demo video has been taken down.

------
unlimit
Congrats on the launch. But could you please darken the text, I am finding it
difficult to read.

~~~
schwanray
Thanks and the font has been darkened. Please enjoy!

------
hegz
Doesn't work well on mobile.

