Ask HN: How to get feedback?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4209036

by mixmastamyk • 14 years ago

2 4 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

After submitting a pair of Show HN (SHN) stories I was a bit dismayed to see they received zero interest, particularly as I got up at 6am to post one. ;) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4196039

I wonder what's wrong? Surely the site must suck (first release should be embarrassing right?), but even so a few "this sucks ..." replies would be much preferable to the deafening indifference I received instead.

Looking over hnshowcase for the last few days I see that the majority of SHNs get 0-1 votes or 40+. I haven't seen a clear division in site quality between the two groups though, as many of the interesting are the ignored. At risk of sounding like a whiner, should I have enlisted a network of employees or upvoters first? I'm just a single guy and this is my side project so I unfortunately don't have those kind of resources available.

What can I do to turn this around? Would appreciate any comments.

duiker101• 14 years ago

Uhm i can feel your pain. I do not have a clear answer for you. But i can make assumptions.

People know each other. A lot of people on this site are in the startup scene from SF NY etc... many know each other personally. This is a huge help.

People cheat. i do not have any proof but sometimes i notice that something that might not be totally worth gets boosted by many points in a short time period. This can be by bot or maybe even being in a small company can help. Everyone gives a vote from the pc and the smartphone and the number goes up.

Sometimes it takes very little. I think that if a thread get a couple of votes in the first 30 minutes it is more likely that people will open it and will vote it. Generating an exponential effect. Same with comments. It takes very little to distinguished your thread from the mass. If you do not abuse it do not be ashamed of resubmitting your thread a week later. Maybe with a new title. Title is also very important.

I usually look mostly at the new section just to find threads that are worth an help. And i am sure there are other people that do it. You just need to be a little lucky. Keep in mind what might be the most interesting hour to submit for you target audience and try. But please don't abuse.

About you submission, you did a good job. You learnt something new, that's the most important thing. You might want to work maybe a bit more on the design, especially the colours, it feels, old. But really liked that hovering an event would highlight it on the map ;)

mixmastamyk• 14 years ago

Thanks, I'm having the same realization. It helps a lot to confirm that others are too.

Re: the design, yeah I'm a programmer not a designer. I liked the Japanese color scheme and thought it looked unique. My two design goals were simply uniqueness and to avoid images/bandwidth costs, so there are some "old school" elements such as the clipart.

Thankfully there is a provision built in for theming. There are a few choices already, but I can make one with blue.

Toph• 14 years ago

I thought of an idea similar to this a few years back but a VERY different implementation. Unfortunately the project was finished (in code) but never launched due to limitations of other platforms at the time to support the overall way the solution worked. Its a good problem to solve.

eragnew• 14 years ago

my take: a nice demo/tutorial would be nice. i went to http://lax.kpasa.co/ and didn't know what i was supposed to do. how do i use it?

+1 if you can demonstrate within the demo why your service would add value to me as a user. sell the service to me. tell me what i can get if i use this service.