
Codename: Svbtle by Dustin Curtis - kreutz
http://dcurt.is/codename-svbtle
======
3pt14159
"When I'm writing, I want to have no distractions, so I removed all of them."

When I'm reading it is the same damn thing. You have TWO flashing beacons.

~~~
nwienert
I cloned it in Ruby on Rails and wrote about it here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3744237>

~~~
stravid
You say "In fact, it goes against the very ethos of Hacker News.", do you
think your action aligns with the "ethos of Hacker News"?

Do you think it's okay to rip-off something just because you think it
shouldn't be invite only?

~~~
kiwim
I do.

~~~
bigiain
I kind-of agree. If someones got a thing where part of their value proposition
is "invite only" curation - then that same idea with different or no curators
seems to be fair game…

------
davej
I wonder how many people gave kudos to the post by mistake? I know I did and
there's no way to remove the kudos you gave afterwards. User actions should be
a click not a hover.

~~~
Smudge
He's already received complaints and sort of laughed them away:
<http://dcurt.is/unkudo>

Personally I think it's bad UX, but what do I know; I'm not Dustin Curtis.

~~~
md224
It's definitely bad UX. Curtis tries to brush away criticism with his claim
that the "kudos" number is "an otherwise meaningless number," but this
argument is fatally flawed. Plenty of things that human beings use for social
signaling are, when removed from context, technically "meaningless", but
within context they can hold plenty of meaning. In the case of Curtis's
website, the "Kudos" counter is implied to display a count of voluntary
approval. By essentially tricking users into incrementing the count, Curtis
violates this expectation, which is why everyone feels "cheated" by it.
Subsequent visitors to the site who don't realize the counter has been gamed
may take it as an indicator of how many people enjoyed the article, when in
fact the numbers are inflated by other users against their will. This is not
only terrible UX, but bordering on outright deceit.

In a world dominated by social media and ubiquitous "Like" counters, for
someone to brush off a Kudos count as "an otherwise meaningless number" is
either an incredible display of naivety or straight-up bullshit.

~~~
aprescott
While I agree, my complaint with it is even simpler: hit refresh and you can
ostensibly keep adding kudos without limit. If that's not the case, then it's
a UI problem because it doesn't tell you as much. If it is the case, then it
certainly removes whatever meaning it has the moment someone starts inflating
the count.

~~~
fruchtose
The problem is really a combination of the two. People expect kudos to be
tracked in a reasonable fashion for the reason that, if the counter exists, it
must be taken seriously. The rest of the system is stripped down, leaving
people with the impression that whatever is left must be important. This is a
false impression, and that's what's disappointing about the feature. Dustin
Curtis has taken a serious (read: pretentious) approach to the rest of the
site, but he's left the kudos system hanging by a chad.

------
devinfoley
"This is the blogging platform for creative, intelligent, and witty people.
Membership by invitation only."

Am I the only person that laughed out loud at this?

~~~
patrickaljord
I didn't laugh but I found that incredibly arrogant and pathetic.

~~~
dcurtis
Pathetic?

It perfectly accomplishes my goal: you'll remember it.

(Edit: Sigh. Now I remember why I have a rule of not commenting on Hacker News
anymore.)

~~~
stuartmemo
If your other goals were to be arrogant and elitist, you've accomplished them
as well.

~~~
rmateu
Maybe because in Venezuela we are bombarded with propaganda everyday about how
terrible meritocracy is, it bothers me to see this sentiment here.

As geeks, don't we recognize that The Deck ads are better than Google AdWords?
Isn't the MacBook Air currently _better_ than probably any other laptop?
Wasn't Gmail the best thing since sliced bread for a long time?

I get it that it's part of the script in a socialist _revolution_ , but in a
start-up news site?

Curtis, can be as arrogant as he wants and still have a great product (or be
right). Just like John Gruber is a jackass, but one who is usually right _and_
(for the context of this site) has a successful business many us would love to
have.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind helping out anybody here (or being
helped), but at the end of the day, I want kick all your asses and win. And if
I can hire the best of you, even better.

~~~
rorymarinich
> Curtis, can be as arrogant as he wants and still have a great product (or be
> right).

Ah, but there's the rub: Dustin doesn't have a great product and he isn't
right. At best he's a good marketer: the only things he ever stands out for
are his gimmicks. His best posts were gimmick posts ("watch me redesign
airport passes!", "let me show you how stupid commercial graphic designers
are!"); his only creations are good marketing creations ("you should follow me
on Twitter here", "kudos!"). Occasionally I've seen him get halfway towards
having a decent thought, but I've never seen him follow through.

Compare that to John Gruber, who's talked before about how he painstakingly
selected the Daring Fireball color before he launched his blog (which has
displayed his thoughts, gimmickless and unchanged, for a decade now).
Greatness is a matter of finding big ideas and sticking to them; the only
thing Dustin's stuck to in the few years he's been promoting himself is that
people ought to remember him. But he's forgotten to create something worth
remembering.

Curtis writes:

> One of my main goals for this new writing interface was to encourage myself
> to spend more time writing and less time presenting.

Which is admirable, and I've noticed that his writing in this new iteration is
somewhat less surface-irritating. But he contradicts this in this very thread,
when he says of his jackass slogan: "It perfectly accomplishes my goal: you'll
remember it." He cares about being remembered; it never seems to occur to him
that there's more to writing good things than making them memorable.

------
encoderer
Points to DCurtis for shipping. That's what this life is all about and it's
easy to lose sight of that.

But my own personal opinion is that I don't love it.

The UI of the published blogs is nice. I actually like the animation on the
left, though I personally would only show it once per session. I think the
challenge will be making this a more usable, integrated experience for the
user while retaining the sparse and appealing UI. Even for "vetted" bloggers,
audience reach and accessibility matters.

I'm not a big fan of the UI for the backend. I like the concepts. But the UI
seems too designed. The strict use of black and white, for example, seems
almost a gimmick to me.

And I really dislike the Kudos "button" and his response to the criticism.

There is absolutely no functional benefit. People know buttons. They expect
buttons to work like all other buttons work: You have to press it if you want
to press it. I could go on and on about why this is bad (unfriendly to touch
UIs (even if it also supports clicking), people shouldn't have to be careful
about where they rest their mouse, it takes 1s to "hover induce" this button
and far less than 1 sec to click, etc.)

But the biggest UX blunder, IMO, is not being able to undo it.

I was less than impressed by DCurtis's response to the Kudos issue: that a
kudos is meaningless. If it's so meaningless why not let people kudos the same
thing more than once? Why have a kudos at all?

I hope this can be seen as constructive, because I think his project is much
bigger than this critique. He worked on something, and shipped. Our industry
is more of a meritocracy than most. Congrats on shipping, high-five and well
done.

Now make it better, please.

~~~
jodrellblank
"The side effect of this is that ideas I would never have written down before
now become fully developed posts. It has hugely surprised me."

And all you're replying about is the look of the UI. Aren't you missing the
most important bit?

------
jarek
For future record: An article about a by-invitation closed-source blogging
platform created by a self-proclaimed superhero is the top article on Hacker
News on March 22, 2012 at 17:16 PST.

~~~
shashashasha
Also: maybe we'll see a rise in LinkedIn profiles of people calling themselves
programming / designer superheros.

------
raganwald
I love the design, but shrug at the idea of vetted bloggers. I have HN and
twitter and reddit and FB and many other ways to filter content for me. I
don't want or need a curated brand.

I especially don't want writers on the network hesitating about whether to
write low-quality material. Insay, wcatter your ideas and let "the market"
decide.

------
seldo
I like the "ideas pane" a lot. I have exactly the same workflow, except my
"ideas pane" is just a text file in Dropbox. I work on posts there until
they're big enough to paste into my blog.

I'm not really interested in running my blog on someone else's platform,
though (I realize I'm in the minority here).

~~~
dcurtis
This is exactly what I used to do. It was during my attempts to move ideas.txt
into the platform interface that the dual pane system was born.

~~~
seldo
I think I might like leaving my ideas in their raw form, though. I tend to
create a bulleted, indented outline of what I'm writing before fleshing it
out.

------
Smudge
Who's vetting the bloggers invited to join the Svbtle network? Is it Dustin
himself? Something about an exclusive, invite-only network for "creative,
intelligent, and witty people" really turns me off.

Not that I wouldn't be interested in reading what only the best and the
brightest have to say. Maybe it's just the way it's been presented, but in its
current form it seems sort of like the Mensa of blogging platforms.

------
delinka
Wait. This isn't some downloadable blogging engine? I'm disappointed. If that
"creative, intelligent and witty" bit isn't sarcasm, how about the guy 'puts
up' and offers the code for download?

Unless this is the guy's business plan and he just doesn't want to kill his
server. But this really looks like an "I built this really cool thing for me
and some friends and you can't play" kind of thing.

~~~
nwienert
I re-created it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3744237>
<https://github.com/natew/obtvse>

------
duaneb
I expected a github link to the software, found... a snobby, invitation-only
network. No thanks, amigo, I think I'll steal your idea and release it for
free.

~~~
davidu
Please, seems simple and useful.

------
Katelyn
1\. Kudos Button: Why the controversy? I've always viewed it as a meaningless
counter that's fun to hover over. I never took the counts seriously. Sometimes
I visit your site just to send arbitrary kudos. What's most concerning about
the buttons is the number of readers that feel "victimized," "deceived" or
"tricked" from, well...a css element.

2\. Svbtle: There are few names I've come across in my career that are as
painful as this one to read, spell or pronounce. It gives me anxiety, and
what's worse is that it's inspired by Svpply. A good name is a word that you
can tell someone over the phone without them asking you how to spell it.
Period.

3\. The ideas panel is cool. Is there a way you could generate the list in
other ways than just manually adding tags? Could you add a bookmarking tool,
for example, that adds keywords to your Ideas List once you bookmark a page
you find thought-provoking?

4\. The S __* Network: Your strategy to build a platform exclusive for
exceptionally high-rated bloggers to use wont work for several reasons, here's
just a few:

4a. I loved your site's design until I saw others on your platform using it.
Then it became boring and nauseating. The design of a blog tells a story
sometimes just as much as the content does. It gives the blogger personality,
and the reader something fresh to look at.

4c. Top bloggers (any bloggers) not only use design to express themselves, but
also to stand out. To be remembered. Eventually when you notice a site's
design enough times, you realize you might want to check out who the author
is.

4d. Social elements and "Sharing" buttons can look messy at times, but the
fact is, bloggers like their content shared, and readers like to share content
they enjoy. Removing arguably the most widely used tool on the web much poorer
design that displaying a 'tweet' button after each post.

4e. Aside from 'ideas' your platform doesn't have anything that takes away the
pain that enough users have to make it worth building. I add 'blogging' to
pg's list of frighteningly ambitious startup ideas..

~~~
MartinCron
_2\. Svbtle: There are few names I've come across in my career that are as
painful as this one to read, spell or pronounce._

Absolutely. I thought that "kiln" was a horrible product name (it still is)
but we've set the bar lower with this.

~~~
Domenic_S
I think Kiln is a brilliant product name for what it is: a source code repo
(kilns are designed to hold quantities of things) that encourages peer review
(kilns dry or harden things).

~~~
MartinCron
It's a good name, conceptually, but it's hard to hear and speak. It's also a
fantastic product.

------
staunch
Drafts in Wordpress work quite well for this purpose. I just click "New Post",
write in some temporary title and a short description in the body, then click
"Save Draft". Viewing drafts is easy too.

I find formatting to be the biggest annoyance in blogging, but I bet there's a
markdown WP plugin for that which I should use.

Actually I do like this, but not for the "ideas" feature. I like it for the
simplicity and hip minimalist aesthetic.

~~~
sirn
I think this is exactly the problem that lead to how he designed the ideas
pane. This make me realized this is exactly why I don't blog, too. If I save
my ideas as draft, it mentally force me to think I will have to publish it at
one point. It's more of a subconscious thing.

------
gaoshan
After reading that my impression is that the whole thing seems kind of douchey
to me. Then again, I'm not a superhero with my own exclusive club so I'm not
really qualified to say anything.

------
sylvinus
The animation of the left sidebar on each page is really annoying.

Aside from that, it looks really clean!

~~~
bprater
Hrm, I thought it was actually kind of nice. Soft, non-obtrusive and gave a
lovely "alive" feel an otherwise cold page. In fact, does anyone know of any
tutorials on how to do this?

~~~
alanh
You may be talking about different things.

There is the temporary red overlay in the sidebar that is, as far as I can
tell, new, and definitely a touch obtrusive (intentionally, no doubt); then,
the relatively subtle circular pulse around the blog logo.

------
marcamillion
I like the concept, but then I clicked through to the other blogs, and it felt
wrong.

I felt like I should be reading John Collison's blog, but I keep hearing
Dustin's voice in my head. The same goes when I switch to other authors.

I get what he is trying to do - by keeping it minimalist and all, but I think
it gets in the way of the content and the author by not offering a distinct
enough experience on each author's words.

------
8ig8
Interesting concept. Like the panes. But this seems contradictory to me:

> It really is the essence of blogging[...] no social bullshit.

> And, of course, you should follow me on Twitter here.

------
jamesjyu
Ah yes, this reminds me why I made QuietWrite. Except, QW is open to all:
<http://www.quietwrite.com>

~~~
digitallimit
You're just missing the stark, black and white interface.

------
huhtenberg
I really like it when people _thoughtfully_ scratch an itch that everyone else
thinks has been scratched to death. There is a room for major improvements in
every established technology area - be it a blogging platform, instant
messaging, analytics or email clients.

PS. This also explains why Dustin needed a Markdown symbol back in February -
<http://drbl.in/daOE>

------
54mf
I have conflicting feelings: love the concept, love the design, but jealous
I'll never get an invite. At least, happy it exists.

~~~
Raphael
You could lift his CSS.

~~~
54mf
Well, yes, but that would be rude.

~~~
uptown
Just do it svbtly.

------
nchlswu
A couple of general things.

(1) Svbtle is actually a decent name (I sort of thing the 'v' is tired, but
that's just a product of things I'm following doing that) Unfortunately, it's
probably not appropriate for a tech audience

(2) I'm very surprised at the significant negative reaction to his 'curation'
of his blogging network. I understand the feelings of condescension, but is it
really that big of a deal? Many things are invite only, vetted by one person.
I'm personally bothered by /other/ elitist attitudes prevalent in the
industry. This is pretty consistent and he never said this was never going to
be public...

------
ihodes
I think the most interesting thing about whatever Dustin does is the hype he's
able to build around it—I'm consistently impressed, and wonder if he might not
be as effective as a promoter as he is a designer.

~~~
cemregr
I think you meant it the other way around?

------
endlessvoid94
Yesterday I made a quip about how 3 of the 5 members were on the frontpage of
HN arguing, and how I didn't want an invite.

Insert foot in mouth.

I really like the idea of the two columns. I'd totally use this.

~~~
alanh
To indulge your tangent: They were indeed “arguing” in some definition of the
word, but I think they kind of agreed a lot, and together painted a coherent
picture I could agree with, and was glad to have read.

~~~
endlessvoid94
What I actually meant was that the argument was extremely narrow to the point
of pedantry.

Is Rails good for an API?

It's a tool, and it has different merits depending on the situation. That's
the answer to the question, and it's the answer to any question like it.

I said I didn't want an invite because I didn't want to be associated with the
three of them arguing over so fine a point, and getting so much exposure for
it.

It all seemed very weird to me. That was my real point.

------
pspeter3
If the domain name is invite only, is there any chance that the code will be
open source so other people can run their own version of svbtle?

~~~
RossM
I'd be interested in running my own single-user version, but I'm sure there'll
be a clone by the weekend (if there isn't I'll probably hack one up at my next
opportunity).

~~~
dcurtis
Please don't copy it just yet.

I'm still working out the problems and polishing the interactions. When
they're all ironed out, I'll open it to the public.

~~~
RossM
Ah, I wasn't under the impression that this would become public - I wouldn't
reproduce something open to others.

Thank you for making something like this a reality - I had a blank-page type
editor a while back but didn't have the chops to make it actually usable at
the time (hence my interest in recreating this).

------
ssmoot
It's very pretty. I wish I had the skill to come up with a UI as nice as that.

I wonder what language/platform it's written in?

~~~
zalew
> I wonder what language/platform it's written in?

I've recently wondered if we (devs) shouldn't adopt a standard like
robots.txt/humans.txt, maybe dev.txt or something where we could put such
information and opensource links (instead of polluting the UI sometimes with
all the 'powered by' braggadacio).

//edit: submitted for discussion <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3742784>

~~~
ricardobeat
The last part of humans.txt is supposed to list the technology used.

~~~
zalew
doesn't look like it <http://humanstxt.org/humans.txt> looks more like the
tools, not the tech stack.

~~~
ricardobeat
It's a choice: <http://desktime.com/humans.txt>

------
swah
He has "the eye" for design, though... everything looks effortless and kinda
great... unlike when I try to make a page look good (yes I read about Mark
Boulton and grids and a visual hierarchy and spacing and baseline and rhythm
and UX but it doesn't do miracles...)

------
farinasa
I'm sorry, but isn't this just a reversion to late 90's style frame design? It
seems all you've done is build it in the latest trendy standards and add a few
little CSS tricks.

Minimalist design is supposed to be about presenting the content first and
foremost. But the content is overshadowed by your frame. Your name and flashy
CSS tricks are the only constants on the page and take up nearly 25% of the
view, but you claim you're trying to draw attention to the content? Perhaps if
the content you're presenting is you, then you have a successful design.

------
brettbergeron
The animating sidebar and kudos buttons are cute the first time around, but
annoying when I start to try and move around the site with real intent.

Overall, it feels like the designer is wagging his/her tail in my face.

------
adeelk
_When I have an idea, no matter how developed, I throw it into the ideas pane.
This creates a physical scrapboard for organizing my thoughts. I work on ideas
over time, and, when one of them becomes developed or good enough, I'll
publish it and it'll move over into the published column._

This is so important. I’ve been using SimpleNote to the same effect. I just
handle the publishing part separately; I publish so rarely that it doesn’t
make sense for me to couple the two together.

~~~
lusr
I don't get it. What's the difference between a "draft" and an "idea"?

~~~
adeelk
In my system each note corresponds to an idea, which usually starts as just a
sentence or two (e.g. “You don’t understand something until it’s obvious.”).
In this note I collect links, quotes, and my own thoughts relating to that
idea. At some point I may turn all this material into a draft.

~~~
lusr
Hmm OK, could still be a draft, though :) I use Evernote for similar stuff,
but then I don't blog.

------
revorad
This is great. I've had something like this (probably even simpler) in my mind
for a while, but never get around to making it.

Dustin, I just emailed you with a name suggestion.

------
waxjar
I think this system is well thought out. It has a beautiful, minimal design
that actually let's you focus on the reading, once you're done playing with
the kudos button.

The only criticism I have is that it relies on sites like Hacker News and
Reddit or email/twitter for discussion. Blog posts may be full of errors, but
readers (and maybe authors) may never find out, due to the relatively
inaccessible discussion/feedback system.

~~~
cellularmitosis
Actually, I've really come to enjoy seeing a "Discuss this post on Hacker
News" link at the bottom of a blog post. I've become annoyed by loading a blog
post, only to discover that 3/4 of the page is just comments.

But really, the same thing could be accomplished by having the comments page
be separate from the article page, yet still be hosted on the same blogging
platform.

------
Killswitch
Awesome job, I am actually slowly building something like this myself.. Just a
simple blogging platform, no fluff, just the essentials.

------
aba_sababa
Awesome. Beat me to it. I treat my writing the same way: like fruit on tree,
adding to it slowly until it ripens.

How can I get an invite?

~~~
newobj
Be creative, intelligent, and witty. And a person.

~~~
jarek
And, of course, you should follow dcurtis on Twitter _here_.

------
brown9-2
It seems ironic for someone not interested in "social bullshit" to have what
is essentially a Like button on each post.

~~~
boristhespider
Hmm. I wouldn't call the essential Like button "social", since it doesn't get
"shared" with one's "friends" or anything like that. Still, I don't think
that's an important difference - it retains the lab rat overtones.

------
obilgic
I think this is a really good example of "being famous does not mean that you
are good at everything". Do not forget why you are famous. If you are really
famous actor and body builder, you might be governor If you try really hard,
but do not run for presidency.

------
dchuk
Am I correct in assuming the post text editor was all custom built? If not,
can anyone link to a solution that is as clean as that? I love the idea of
just typing on the page versus typing into a special box with a hundred
buttons along the top

~~~
dcurtis
I didn't really custom build it; it's just a normal textarea element with the
borders removed and the typography matched to exactly how it's displayed on
the blog.

~~~
aprescott
How do you edit? Directly into the textarea or do you toggle between markdown
and preview?

------
spindritf
It looks weird without javascript, there's this huge slab of colour on the
left, and the script eats up half of a core (Firefox 11). Are all blogs in
Svbtle centrally hosted? Not just federated?

------
willvarfar
Lovely, very lovely.

It looks so _usable_.

I've been irritated by lack of features in Tumblr; whilst you don't those
features, it does look like you have a cleaner approach for content-creating.

Reminds me slightly of Trello.

~~~
skeletonjelly
Is your definition of usable inversely proportional with the number of
features and their associated buttons? Yet you're upset by the lack of
features in Tumblr?

------
methoddk
It all seems _really_ snooty and lame. Not digging the attitude, dcurtis.

Sidenote: The judos thing is annoying and the design is mad plain.

------
rwc
Amusingly, he's gone from being a "superhero" to a "villain" according to his
tagline at dcurt.is

------
icki
Have you considered displaying a collective feed of your networks' posts on
the homepage?

------
MaysonL
Reminds me of Google's redesigns...

