I dare say that HN but with better comments and commenters would quickly gain traction. Where that's the folks, sure, but the site's features do also affect the folks. eg at one end of the spectrum, a broken login system means no folk around to comment, and so one can imagine the opposite effect, where the perfect set of features raises the quality of comments. What that perfect blend of features are, I can't say. if I knew I would have built that site already
warrenm•7mo ago
Features are not why people switch
If features were good enough, Google+ would have left Facebook in the dust
If features were good enough, Mastodon would have buried Twitter years ago
Adapting the adage "amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics" - "amateurs talk features, professionals talk problem solving"
"Features" are how bad marketers promote their offerings
Problem solving is how good marketers promote their offerings
You need to solve a problem for me to consider you - a 'feature' has never solved a single problem
Identify problems (real or imagined) that I have that your XYZ solves for me (at all; in a better way than what I am using now; etc), and you have a chance to get me to switch
Try to pitch me on your "features", and I will keep on surfing by
chistev•7mo ago
PaulHoule•7mo ago
The problem I see is "bad behavior" which has forms like
(1) People who blame their problems on other categories of people
(2) Posts about the outrage of the day
(3) DMs from people who say "Hey!" who are really trying to qualify me for a romance scam
(4) OnlyFans stars who want to me to engage with them. I don't want to engage with them at all, but if I did, I wouldn't want to engage with them on a platform where I also engage with my sister-in-law.
Answers to some of those problems might involve taking features away, for instance (3) could be addressed by just not supporting DMs at all. For other people, (1-2) and (4) might be the whole reason they're there.
msgodel•7mo ago
PaulHoule•7mo ago
Blog have all sorts of problems:
(1) It takes a huge amount of effort to write, sysadmin, and promote. (Say an equal share to all three)
(2) If I was successful in promoting a blog in the AWS age I'd bankrupt myself, particularly if I was interested in publishing video, which a lot of people are.
(3) Between the shift to static generation and the horrors of content moderation I'd probably not want comments if I had a blog
Even technically savvy people have given up or retreated to Medium/Substack.
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/up-8.bsky.social and https://mastodon.social/@UP8
msgodel•7mo ago
EDIT: Didn't see 3) the first time but yeah I don't think comments do most people any good. Like I said blog + email covers what most people want it just isn't sold to them outside of places like substack (and even they really try hard to get people to use "notes" which is essentially orange twitter.)
PaulHoule•7mo ago
msgodel•7mo ago
PaulHoule•7mo ago
https://indieweb.org/POSSE
so if I did get around to blogging again I'd still be posting on social for visibility.
econ•7mo ago
JohnFen•7mo ago
Not necessarily, but they can be.
warrenm•7mo ago
Features are just checkboxes on a list
"Allows image posting" is a feature
"Creates envy among those who missed a party" is solving a problem