zlacker

>>jjcm+(OP)
Congrats on the hard work, and the idea is fine, but the problem is that tech like this is a cheap commodity in a massively oversaturated space, and without a hook that makes the platform exceptional (innovative/clever/beautiful design, unique aggregation features, inherently interesting content, reimagined user/content/moderation dynamics etc etc), this kind of thing is dead in the water because it lacks a network effect. Add in the upfront subscription model and failure to launch is basically assured.

When I visit the root domain I shouldn't be greeted with a marketing splash page, you need interesting content in the user's face right away, entice their curiosity and drive the user to explore the site... even as a fellow developer, my first instinct is to abandon the page as soon as I'm greeted with the cliche startup marketing page. Consider the user experience when I visit reddit.com or news.ycombinator.com or any other link aggregation competitor. What you have now is a tech demo, not a platform. Sorry if that's a little harsh, but I mean well! Good luck!

>>root_a+Ih
100% agree with everything said here.

My original plan was to pay for ~100 users accounts and seed the site with content for a proper launch. Given what's happening today though, it felt at least pertinent to show off the current state and get some feedback.

The balance between splash page on landing / landing on content is a hard one, but I think you're right. I am worried though that without conveying the initial business model, it'll be harder for users to understand that this isn't a direct reddit clone.

>>jjcm+qm
An idea I mull over occasionally: what if you could spend your karma points to boost any given post? This would ultimately be another form of paid advertising, except that the currency used would be earned by contributing to the community. Then, allow people to sell their karma points for fiat currency. Companies would buy karma points directly from users in order to promote their self-promotional posts, but those posts would be subject to the same rules and moderation as any other post. That way you're actually paying your best users rather than charging them.

>>kokane+dS
This has been tried in the cryptocurrency space, people start faking accounts to upvote their content and make money.

So basically what already happens with reddit/twitter/etc but amplified because you give them a direct financial incentive to upvote low effort crap.

>>ric2b+jx1
I think it can be solved by personalizing the top page(s), so you mostly see the kind of stuff you upvote. If there are a few people up-voting crap you wont see it, but they will see all of it.

>>z3t4+ZF1
I'm building https://linklonk.com which works this way - you get content ranked based on what you upvoted. This is to make the incentives for voting aligned and help prevent abuse.

I think the problem with karma/reputation systems is that the source of karma are fungible - anyone's upvote has the same effect on the reputation. And this makes it gameable.

A personalized system can solve this by replacing global reputation with user-to-user trust. Now it matters who upvoted - a random bot or a user whose past contributions have been useful to you.

>>lonk11+lX1
>Now it matters who upvoted - a random bot or a user whose past contributions have been useful to you. //

In that system how do you create a ranked list of content for a user to browse? Isn't it going to be very heavy on processing demand?