Show HN: An Alternative to Reddit
narf.comNice, but it's departure from HN's and Reddit's minimalistic clean UI, so, often the lack of any design attempt is the best design!
Perhaps, but I need to differentiate myself. I think the design is a good mix of functional and good looking... could always be better of course. Thanks for the feedback.
Maybe you could use embedly to pull in a picture from the submission, instead of using the alternating robots.
I'm hoping the robots are temporary. When users submit stories it shows their pictures. I've considered using embedly or writing something of my own though. What do you think is better, user pictures or a picture from the linked to page?
I'd rather not see the users pictures at all. With most sites it seems you end up with a few bulk submitters in each category. Seeing their faces/avatars over and over again would get really old really fast. I could see it also potentially altering voting behavior. There are certain users on all social media sites (reddit and hn included) where some users will be upvoted/downvoted just due to their popularity or "fame". A visual indicator might increase those trends as they are faster to spot.
Ok. I'll look into using pictures from stories and maybe try some A/B testing once I get more users.
Definitely a picture from the linked story. I don't really care who the submitter is.
Thanks for feedback guys. I'll try and implement this tomorrow.
Story pictures are now implemented!
Hi Everyone. This my new product - Narf - A user curated news site. A lot like Hacker News, which I love, but where people use their real identities. My theory is that real identities will help produce great conversations... Would love any feedback you have to give.
Looks nice, with a clean/simple layout. The only thing I found to be distracting are the weight and position of the discuss/comments buttons. As they are aligned with the end of the byline for each article they aren't in the same place between articles, and being buttons they are significantly larger than the surrounding text. Of course if your intention was to draw attention to those buttons it worked on me.
The goal is to draw attention, so that people will discuss the stories. Glad it worked. :)
Facebook login. Cannot use. :(
This was one of the first comments I expected to get. :) My theory is that people using their real identities as provided by Facebook will improve the quality of the site. We'll see how it goes.
It's a nice theory... Until you look at the sheer range of quality of postings on Facebook. Have you seen Lamebook? It's utterly mind-boggling. I don't believe that identity has even the slightest effect on stupidity. Facebook proves that, in my mind.
Metamoderation has always demonstrated the ability to support quality, especially in the absence of identity. People lacking history or demonstrating poor behavior punish themselves and self-select in that environment.
I'm not complaining except for the fact that I'm deliberately avoiding Facebook - there are people on there I want nothing to do with and from whom I wish to isolate myself, and the utter complexity of privacy issues on Facebook further turn me off to it. I feel safer when I can dissociate my accounts across various sites, however misguided that may be. I'd like to participate on your site, as it looks interesting, but the requirement of a Facebook account is a complete dealbreaker.
Hi narf's!
What do you use for search?
Don't you want to try hosted search like IndexDen (IndexTank alternative) and move search management to our shoulders?
BTW: We're helping everyone with integration ;-)
Kind Regards http://IndexDen.com
A sorting & filtering feature would seal the deal for me!
How would you like to sort things?
You should copy reddit's. Basically time-based sort, and trending submission sort.
Also inevitably you'd need some grouping/labeling so users can filter out/in. E.g. I'd never want any submission about cats.
The frontpage now has top/new feeds.
Looks nice -- is this built on Twitter bootstrap?
I am using bootstrap... only for a few things like the topic completion javascript and for a basic css framework. It was a great way to get the site going. I hoped it wasn't obvious. :)
I like the name ;-)