
Show HN: Interestin - talhof8
http://www.interestin.co/essay/55
======
jcutrell
I think you have something here if you focus on the idea that the submissions
should be essays.

If you don't focus that and make sure the content is great, then there's not
much of a difference between this platform and, say, Tumblr. Sure, following
interests adds a nice layer, but there are plenty of other platforms that
allow for that as well.

You're right to focus on content. Part of the reason HN is so successful is
because the rules and regulations on content are adhered to, strictly. Adopt
some of that, and I think you could gain a good user base.

~~~
talhof8
Thanks, I appreciate your feedback! I totally agree, although it might be a
challenge. I really don't want it to become another Tumblr.

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tensafefrogs
I've also tried to create the kind of site you are hoping for. The key thing
here is the ability to follow interests as well as people, but I think you are
still getting bogged down in static categories. Look at how Medium has done
it: Anyone can create a collection, and you can follow the collections
(instead of following people). This way you empower people to curate and be
rewarded for good curation, as well as allowing the followers to filter out
the unwanted content. The classic example I like to use is I follow @gruber
for his Apple commentary, but I don't care about Baseball, so a few times a
year I wish I could filter that stuff out.

On the other hand, you want creators to be able to share seamlessly, and
making them categorize their content isn't a good way to do it. Looking at the
popular social services out there, making people choose a category is too much
work, and is too limiting. And when you try to create a service that supports
all of these needs, you end up with a really complicated tool that people
don't use how you envisioned (see G+ - it has "pages" to support personas, it
has private sharing via circles, it has communities, but you can't just throw
all of this stuff at users all at once and expect a community to show up out
of nowhere... you have to build your community)

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WoodenChair
What technologies did you build this with? What database are you using? Why is
this preferable to something like a Facebook group or tumblr blog aggregator?
For example, if I'm interested in Heavy Metal why wouldn't I just follow a
Heavy Metal blog and join a Heavy Metal Facebook group? Thanks - the site
looks functional and I appreciate your enthusiasm. Looking forward to your
relies.

~~~
talhof8
Built with PHP (looking backwards, I'd use Python) and MySQL, hosted on AWS
EC2. While following Heavy Metal blog on Facebook will expose you to relevant
content, you will still miss other blogs and what they have to say. Following
a broad facebook page of "Heavy Metal" will probably expose you to a whole
pile of spam and ads. This is why Interestin has upvotes so spam and ads won't
get to the top. Also, I hope to develop some sort of anti-spam mechanism, but
this will take a while. Thanks!

------
VLM
Your dropdown for interest in "write an essay" should sort alphanumerically.
Woodworking shouldn't come before Minecraft.

Delete an essay? Well, um, OK.

Gravatar integration might be nice.

You can also outsource your authentication by a billion other services openid
and all that.

So you're bravely marching into the battle of trying to expunge spam and ads
yet allowing anonymous commenting. Well, good luck with that.

Appearance is clean and fast and no obvious bugs other than my picky sorting
issue. Well done.

From a UI perspective having a list of zillions of empty interests is a
problem. So you think heavy metal is great, well cool so maybe this will be a
heavy metal related people and topics kind of website. Or would people who
knit clothing fit in too, presumably in different interest areas. And hows
that all going to fit on one enormous page of interests? Is this the main
university library or the small specialized school of music satellite library
focusing solely on music?

(edited to add, and do essays and interests age out, so if no one ever posts
to woodworking, after a month thats the end of that. Or...)

You seem to 1:many map a post into an interest. Its probably more of a
many:many tag like structure. So for the sheer heck of it I posted link to a
wooden clock I'm building in woodworking. Now that you'd "tag" as clock-nuts
or fine-woodworking or noob or whatever. Or are you going for something like
"IRC on the web" where theres "a" room with "a" name and its not twitter tag
time, which is a perfectly valid plan.

Is this your idea of a minimum viable product and if so, where to go from
here? Or rephrased, what do you plan to do with it?

------
VLM
Did you research categorizations of human knowledge?

I've always wanted to see a discussion site that uses LCC (think, like Dewey
Decimal, but free). Preloaded with the whole LCC catalog of human interests.
Maybe the names in the LCC are not terribly intuitive but I'd like to
subscribe to QC and QD.

There are of course many other knowledge classification systems.

------
spartanmorning
This is very similar in ambition to
[https://empeopled.com](https://empeopled.com) which is also community-based
content sharing and voting platform. The main differences seem to be 1) your
vote weight on empeopled is determined by your previous contributions in a
given community (independently) and 2) the same voting system is used to
determine the community's rules and elect its leaders

full disclosure: I am one of the co-founders :)

~~~
NoahTheDuke
That website doesn't load for me.

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laCour
Seeing a bit of inspiration from Quora; nice idea and execution.

You're capitalizing last names, whereas names can start with lowercase letters
(as does mine). The content shouldn't be pushed to the right, it's harder to
read, consider moving the topic list to the right side instead. The line
length isn't too bad, but reading is made much worse when it's pushed to the
right because of the topic list.

~~~
talhof8
Thanks! I'll add it to the to-do list.

Update: deleted the names capitalizing. Thanks for letting me know!

------
mattwritescode
So you have created a
[http://news.ycombinator.com](http://news.ycombinator.com)

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jzig
This reminds me of [http://everything2.com/](http://everything2.com/)

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martingordon
Haven't really dived into it because of the nasty CSS issue with narrow(er)
screens (My Safari window is at 1110px, it's an issue below 1350px):
[http://imgur.com/Na6cLfo](http://imgur.com/Na6cLfo)

~~~
talhof8
Fixes, thanks!

------
VLM
Meta suggestion... Before submitting to Show HN, sites in general should get
their friends/family to preload many theoretical examples, otherwise the Show
HN is going to be grammar errors and lots of "what is it for".

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pearjuice
Why do I need to login if I want to post a comment anonymously?

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sebkomianos
I don't get this, what are you brining to the game? Isn't "interestin"
something like a mix of medium.com, hackernews and quora?

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GotAnyMegadeth
Is there a FAQ/Guidelines on what kind of thing you can/should post?

Also can you add pictures etc to posts?

~~~
talhof8
Regarding the pics - working on it.

There's not a FAQ really but that's a good idea. I'll write one in the next
few hours. Essentially you can post anything you'd like as long as you don't
just take others' work (not directly pointed at you of course). You can post
blog posts, questions, your opinions, etc... Actually, anything that you think
might be relevant. Thanks!

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
Excellent thanks. This looks great btw, I have been looking for somewhere to
talk metal for a while

------
oddshocks
Any plans to open source / apply a free software license?

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rfnslyr
Way too much content on the page you linked, especially since it's what seems
like a self post by a user? Why not link the main page that identifies the
goals/target of your website right off the bat with some cutesy one liner or
animation or 3-step website flow so I know exactly what I'm getting as soon as
I visit?

Your UI is supposed to make me want to stay. It's very bland, right down to
the logo. Where are the colours? If I stay more than 10 seconds clicking
around and I don't love it, I'm gone, sorry but there's millions of sites out
there I could browse.

I don't understand how it works. I click the links on the left (why are they
randomly generated?) and it just generates more random links, and for some
reason has peoples avatars on top? Why? What happens if you get 100,000 users,
what function will the top avatars serve? Why not have a members directory?

Why did you link me a link that says /essay/? Is that a users self post?
Shouldn't this explanation be summarized for easy consumption by the user upon
first visit to the root domain?

Really think about the flow of your site and the UI/UX. Right now, I am very
uninterested in using this website. No offense but if you want this to go
somewhere, the benefit has to be painfully obvious.

Sorry for being harsh but I was just typing the thoughts as they came right to
my head as I viewed the page, this is how I think and I'd imagine how a lot
more users think.

Right now this seems like a cute side project, put in the time to make it a
real product.

~~~
talhof8
Thanks, will take into consideration!

------
adnam
Uninterestin

~~~
kadabra9
I'm so sick of reading these worthless comments in show HN threads. What do
they add to the discussion, besides making you feel smug about some using some
cheap pun to dismiss someone elses's work? If you think OP's project could be
improved upon or you don't like it, at least explain why or offer some
feedback.

~~~
fantnn
There seems to be very little substance here besides a thin wrapper around
some database queries to categorically show posts. The search is complete
garbage also, I searched for "never give" (partial title of one of the posts).
The post was 5th or 6th in the results, and the top results had neither search
term anywhere in the article or title. This is "Uninterestin" in every sense
of the word.

