8 days. 8,000 forums

http://moot.it/blog/release/8-days-8000-forums.html

by tipiirai • 13 years ago

63 70 13 years ago

davidw• 13 years ago

One of the reasons I really like Google Groups is that it lets me treat something as a mailing list. By and large, I want to use an email client for serious discussions, not a 'forum' thing. Adding this functionality would be super cool.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Moot is primarly meant for websites and the goal is to keep discussion and the users on the site. This will make users come back and potentia.ly increase traffic on the site.

We're launching email notifications next week.

Shish2k• 13 years ago

> the goal is to keep discussion and the users on the site. This will make users come back

Back when I first got online and only had one forum I was interested in, this was true - but it really doesn't scale. Trying to keep up with even 3 active forums by visiting each in turn is painful. Since then, I've pretty much ignored any information source that doesn't have either RSS or email feeds, since I can multiplex hundreds of those with no problem :P

(For a more average-joe version of this, note how facebook has largely replaced independent forums and IRC - people are lazy, and going out of their way to check an external site on a daily basis is much more work than clicking a "like" button and having that site's news become part of their standard routine)

cantbecool• 13 years ago

It is really snappy and nice, however I still don't understand why there isn't nested threads. It's such a pain trying to navigate around trying to figure out what is in reply to what.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Moot has a concept of "paths" which allow you to setup unlimited discussion hierarchies. All parent paths contain all the moots from the children.

We're putting together more docs to help cover these concepts soon!

Single thread (which we call a moot) doesn't support threading. If you try to browse bigger threads here in HN or in Reddit you'll soon realize that you'll get lost. Especially when you come back to the site it's impossible to know what has changed. We think discussions should be chronological.

Later we're adding support for replying to replies (one level only) and a way to branch from the main topic.

raldi2• 13 years ago

> If you try to browse bigger threads here in HN or in Reddit you'll soon realize that you'll get lost.

That never happens to me, especially on reddit, where threads are collapsible. How do you end up lost?

> Especially when you come back to the site it's impossible to know what has changed.

No it's not. There's a reddit gold feature for that.

webwanderings2• 13 years ago

It's not about being lost, it's about not being able to read bigger threads.

The answer is no-thread.

I have yet to look at the features you provide, in detail; however, am I the only one who thinks that the word "moot" is the opposite of what you're trying to achieve? Why would anyone moot anything if they're trying to converse?

Also, your embedding option looks lot more similar to branch.com which I think is strugglig to make a space.

lukeholder• 13 years ago

I think there is a massive market for an open source version of a service like this or disqus. An admin panel for management, and a embeddable javascript app in pages.

I wonder if www.discourse.org will ever look at making an embeddable js component.

ScottWhigham• 13 years ago

Whenever you say, "I think there is a massive market", you don't follow up with "for an open source version" haha. :)

kaeruct• 13 years ago

Too bad this isn't open source, it's the only thing stopping me from using it. Probably gonna use discourse instead

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

This is indeed the case right now. We're open sourcing big chunks of code later once they are nicely packaged and documented.

Kequc2• 13 years ago

How does the embedding work, does it fetch html or does it fetch data and then build the html with javascript? When you navigate within the forum I imagine it does the same and loads in place. How close am I?

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Very close. It fetches JSON data from api.moot.it, generates HTML with JavaScript and places it on your site. And when you load another page it does the same thing, but only for a smaller portion of the DOM.

Kequc2• 13 years ago

Is it necessary for a user to log in separately on every forum or how do you keep people authenticated?

devgutt• 13 years ago

3 years to launch? It seems a lot of time without the user's consent. Although, nice work, very consistent.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Yup. We felt a little crazy at some point.

Thanks!

pibefision• 13 years ago

I don't believe in forums as a SaaS.

Wordpress growth, in a sense, it is because it is open source. You can have your own version, and also, if you prefer, they can host your blog.

A forums is a different kind of service, takes a lot of time and effort to build a community, and if this guys dissapear in 2 or 3 months, years, etc, it is a big loss.

I prefer the path that Discourse is taking. It's software is open source & they are experts in hosting it. Like wordpress. So, if my community finally is growing, I can think on host everything by myself.

Also, I love redis, I use it a lot, but don't understand why it is a key driver to explain the product proposition.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

We just blogged something about infrastructure where Redis plays a key role. It has nothing to do with our product proposition. Expect to see various topics about design and technology.

stevoski• 13 years ago

I _do_ believe in forums as a SaaS.

Yes, there are risks, as you pointed out. There are also benefits.

The forum service provider rolls out updates

The forum service provider applies security patches

The forum service provider keeps the service running 24 hours, and gets woken up in the middle of the night to fix unexpected crashes, not me.

I try to outsource anything I can. And forums is one of them.

buro92• 13 years ago

I run some very large forums, and the reason I'm now making a forum PaaS/SaaS play is precisely because of the above.

Just Google for "Powered by vBulletin 3.8" to see how many hundred thousands of forums are running old unpatched versions of forum software.

Most people who run forums are into the topic of the forum, not becoming a sysadmin.

trumbitta2• 13 years ago

Hello, Wordpress is a blog engine, not a forum.

swang• 13 years ago

Are there any active forums besides the main moot.it/forum? I tried going to relatively common keywords and most are just people kinda squatting on them during the initial landgrab.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Like we say; we've been up only 8 days. Our forum is currently the most active one and you'll probably get the best picture there. Here is a playground forum where you can fool around freely:

http://moot.it/demos/forum.html

asciimo• 13 years ago

This is hot. However, the "Log in and post" button is inactive out for me. Shouldn't that immediately launch a login/register interface? Otherwise, I have to drag my mouse all the way over to the "log in" link.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Here are some: http://moot.it/forum/#!/setting-up#working-moots

vfl0• 13 years ago

I really like the features offered (especially the realtime updates), and how you can customise it. Would prefer to host it on my own website though.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Go for it! That's the whole point of Moot.

lingben• 13 years ago

embedding is not the same as hosting

JLehtinen3• 13 years ago

Moot architecture is a distributed cloud based service - unless someone wants to set up the dozen or so servers it would require for a basic Moot setup, it wouldn't be feasible even if the infrastructure setup was open sourced.

nwh• 13 years ago

A free service with no advertising and a very limited business model?

I fail to see why anybody would want to build a community on a service that will disappear in a few months.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

We're going to have paid features such as single sign on or private posts on top of our core offering. You can read more about our plans here

http://moot.it/about/

khet• 13 years ago

The parent's argument still holds true.

Just because you "plan" to make money does not mean you will make money.

phrasemix• 13 years ago

I really like the fact that Moot seems to handle both forum-style posts and on-page comments. As the owner of a content site, I really want both. I've even gone so far as to try to hack Disqus to work as a forum.

If there was an easy import feature for Disqus threads, I'd probably switch right over.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

We are aware of this urgent need. You are not alone in this. And you can be sure this is exactly what we are working on.

buro92• 13 years ago

Very impressive.

We have a startup ( http://microco.sm/ ) in this very space (hosted forums) and will be launching our alpha in the next two weeks. Our design rushes are pretty close to this (though we haven't updated the linked site in ages it feels) and we love that others are innovating in this space and feel that they've also spotted and validated a need for simpler, more engaging forums.

I really like the look of this, one of the much stronger offerings to have emerged in this space.

Will be good to see how we all do in a year or so, and which we way pivot and the changes in our respective business models.

Right now this looks like more of a Disqus rival than anything, but I'm sure they will do well with things like forums for really small communities such as housing associations and knitting groups, etc.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Thank you! Welcome on board!

DanBC2• 13 years ago

Have you sorted out the legal issues with the name?

Because I'd be wary about using something under a C&D with such a clear case.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Yes we have. Mr Poole "contacted" us:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20408037

alanctgardner2• 13 years ago

I don't know much about Mr Poole's personal politics, but based on the nature of 4chan it seems pretty hypocritical of him to run to the legal system over someone using an English language word for their product name.

"Yeah, anarchy! Wait, I can't have everything my way?"

DanBC2• 13 years ago

It was a very simple question - have you sorted out the legal issues or not?

His lawyers sent you a C&D; you responded to that C&D and now you've launched.

Considering he's been known as moot since 2003, and is known by millions of people as moot, and has a strong link to online discussion forums, I'd think he has an excellent case.

Since, apart from his name, the primary meaning of moot is "closed to debate" (not "open to debate"; you're welcome to provide examples of "moot point" where the meaning is "open to debate" and not "closed to debate") it seems like a weird choice of name.

davidascher• 13 years ago

Impressive performance and clean design. /me interested.

I don't understand the need to claim such a broad copyright license on content submitted.

"When providing us with content or posting content on Moot’s site or related third-party sites, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right AND LICENSE to exercise any and all copyright, trademark, publicity, and database rights you have in the content, in any media known now or in the future."

The "Why do we have this clause" link doesn't feel like it answers that either.

Also, the "Following is guaranteed" bit needs work. It sounds good, but is legally worthless, I expect.

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

It might be legally worthless but that's what we guarantee.

How would you improve it?

pekk• 13 years ago

If you run a forum, on what legal basis are you allowed to continue using what user has posted? Doesn't this represent a continuous existential risk for a forum, that such rights will be claimed?

iampims• 13 years ago

    We're experiencing problems and this post was not saved.
    Please copy the post to clipboard, reload and try again.
    Sorry, we're fixing this!

Redis issue?

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Yup. We're fixing this :) We still have some hiccups there since it's still beta.

Did you manage to post it again? Can you please describe us how this happened here

http://moot.it/issues

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Not a redis issue. This is related to the connection between client & server.

film42• 13 years ago

Moot says they use JSON-RPC because a standard REST framework is not suitable.

Can anyone shed some light on how big of a performance boost JSON-RPC provides when dealing with things like notifications?

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

JSON-RPC is not about performance. A RPC protocol just makes more sense for full-duplex communication where both sending and receiving end can send messages to each other at any time. REST is inherently a request / response pattern and is not designed to build these kinds of "real time" applications. It's about your system architecture. Better to use the right tools for the job.

entropie2• 13 years ago

Is there any internationalization planed?

Edit: forgot to say: i'ts awesome!

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

Thanks!

Absolutely. It's on our short term roadmap. Coming out in next 2 weeks. It's a highly requested feature. Some discussion about it:

http://moot.it/forum/#!/open-word#additional-language-suppor...

Here is a rough draft of RTL (right to left) support.

http://moot.it/demos/rtl.html

entropie2• 13 years ago

You guys rock, really.

parfe• 13 years ago

Not related to 4chan in any way

http://betabeat.com/2012/11/4chan-founder-moot-sends-cease-d...

Although my curiosity certainly supports Poole's position. I assumed this was moot monetizing forums.

lnanek2• 13 years ago

Ha, yes, I thought it was going to be him from the name as well, until I went to the site and found out otherwise. I suppose moot is a word, though, not just a name. Although the only time I heard it used using the discussion definition instead of the more common one was a Tolkien book or something. Maybe they aren't from the US and people outside the US use it this way.

ritonlajoie• 13 years ago

What happened to this startup 2 years ago that made the same thing ? They received an impressive amount of $$$, and now I don't even remember their name.. any idea ?

makeee• 13 years ago

Any plans to allow sites to use their existing authentication/identity system, rather then require users to signup with moot to participate in the forum?

courtneycouch02• 13 years ago

SSO is coming for you to be able to integrate into your authentication system.

peteforde2• 13 years ago

If I launched a photo sharing site called Laughing Squid, a large percentage of my ideal demographic would hate me.

If I put a lot of work into something, why would I blow my own foot off for cheap publicity?

tipiirai21• 13 years ago

peteforde2• 13 years ago

Not sure what you're ?ing about.

DonPellegrino• 13 years ago

I'd pay to be able to host my own.

spyder• 13 years ago

What about SEO? It should be important for a forum. I found most of the smaller forums that i know with google search.

8 days. 8,000 forums

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