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350 sats \ 29 comments \ @k00b 10 Sep 2021 meta

Tipping is live!

It's pretty straightforward I hope. Like you would boost posts before, on your second upvote click you get a dialog to either boost or tip a post/comment. Tips go directly to the poster/commenter. Boost, as before, goes to the site and just boosts the rank of the content. This should allow for more interesting incentives for participation until I implement more levers to pull on post economics.

The UI/UX is far from ideal I think - we'll iterate from here as with all else. Please if you have even a hint of confusion or dislike or like, say something and I'll try to figure out how to integrate your advice.

Tentative roadmap from here (advice as always is welcome):

user profiles
- profile images
- "send me money" invoices and lightning addresses
- bios (I have a cool hack/idea that'll allow for cool code reuse - tip for anyone who can guess what it is)
- sat activity: see how you're making and spending money
refinement
make contributing to SN easier
- docker image
- document api
refinement
growth hacks
- make SN invite only?
- faucets?
- host archive of bitcoin-dev and lightning-dev?
refinement
sovereignty
- onion address (should probably start generating a vanity address now)
- non-custodial wallet (some way, some how)
moooooon

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30 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 10 Sep 2021

Pretty cool. Yeah, the UI/UX could use a bit more love :)

29 sats \ 5 replies \ @g4ala 11 Sep 2021

It would be good to be able to run a search, or have SN indexed in some way, so that double posts can be avoided.

2 sats \ 3 replies \ @gmd 11 Sep 2021

Have been looking for this also, for the same reason..

I also find myself looking for the the "top of (day/week/month/year/all-time)" sort feature... don't think hackernews has this though..

2 sats \ 2 replies \ @nout 11 Sep 2021

Yeah, I would also like "Top of week" feature. Maybe it's a good idea to not have "all-time", since that would encourage weird competition.

12 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 11 Sep 2021

Considering how this could work. You could have a new "nav-item" called "top" or "popular" and under that would be 2 dropdowns that user can choose from

Popular: Today, This week, This month, This year
Created: [Today], Any time The Created would have 2 options, the first one would match your "Popular" selection and the other would be "Any time". The selection for both would be nice to persist on client (e.g. localStorage).

This serves 2 purposes, sometimes you just want to see the freshly created news only. And sometimes you want to see what has been boosted recently. This may be a bit harder to grasp by just reading this definition, but try playing with it in action, it becomes intuitive ;) @k00b FYI.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 12 Sep 2021

I'll toy around with this.

I have a github issue tracking sorting (as requested by another user) https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/issues/15

I'll drop a link to this comment in there.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 11 Sep 2021

Agreed, need to add this to gh.

24 sats \ 7 replies \ @gmd 10 Sep 2021

very cool!!! does the quantity of boost matter or is it discrete? i would love to tip site without altering the algorithm order too much…

23 sats \ 6 replies \ @k00b OP 10 Sep 2021

Quantity of boost matters but it decays roughly twice as exponentially with time as organic sats. I need a donate/sink button I guess.

1 sat \ 5 replies \ @gmd 10 Sep 2021

would love others input but i do wonder if the boost/tipping gets a little confusing and cumbersome if you want to tip author and the site (which is my preference).

Maybe have a user configurable setting, default 21% of tips go to SN, 79% to commenter/poster but user can set 0-100%. When they tip the sats get distributed by that set fraction.

Then you could possibly hide boosts (or keep internal) and just have promotion algorithm be a function of tips… might simplify things.

This is fun though… Just reloaded my wallet!

22 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b OP 10 Sep 2021

Using tips to rank is more complicated that it seems if SN doesn't take a huge cut - because you can create a sock puppet to just tip yourself to rank higher while keeping the money "in the family."

But I vibe with this frustration. How the heck do we reduce all the buttons, stats, complexity that will likely only grow? It's hard while trying to navigate potentially malicious users.

I think tipping the site should probably just be facilitated with its own button somewhere? I don't know.

1 sat \ 3 replies \ @gmd 10 Sep 2021

ahh never considered the gaming aspect. I wonder if there might be a discrete cap to the internal algorithm "boost".. as in each account can upvote max 2x:

once for 1 sat normal upvote
once for a tip of any size (or for a set minimum tip) That way the only way to further game the system would be to create a bunch of accounts- annoying but hard to prevent and at least a good amount of work for the malicious user.

6 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 11 Sep 2021

Thanks for starting a conversation around this.

On my walk home: I think the way forward is to remove boost as an action users can make on an item and put it as an option when you create a post. It simplifies the site a lot but allows for users to promote things temporarily.

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @gmd 11 Sep 2021

was thinking about this myself while walking the dogs- any other forums where something like a boost has been implemented? Doesn’t mean it necessarily shouldn’t be a new thing but it seems most places have by necessity become very anti-self promotion because of spamming. Many FB groups once they achieve mass become pay to play for self promotion but it’s somewhat cumbersome for mods to deal with without something like you’ve built.

Perhaps can keep the boost there but maybe make it cost significantly more in sats… some sort of exponential increase in cost for each additional boost. keeping the current transparency so users know a thread has been boosted.

Might be worth it’s own thread to get more community opinion.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 11 Sep 2021

I think you’re right. It should cost more or be removed. The problem with making it too expensive and allowing you to only boost when posting is I’d need to provide estimates on how effective the boost will be … complicated. I like keeping it though because it demonstrates we can do interesting things when money is native to the application.

reply on another page

17 sats \ 3 replies \ @02d10975a1 13 Sep 2021 freebie

Growth hacks might result in lower quality of users. I don't really think that SN needs more features right now, and generally the focus should be on UX & performance. Quality content + users is what matters. I check SN every day, so from my perspective it should be sticky enough for organic growth.

1 sat \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 13 Sep 2021

This is great feedback! Content quality in a way depends on having more users - only a handful of us really post content as is and users might post more if there were more users to engage with it - but I agree.

Also to your point, we don't want low quality users which is why I think growth hacks should either increase the hurdle (like invite-only in which case we grow slower but stronger) or somehow increase content quality (like hosting a searchable archive of dev mailing lists).

It's at the bottom of the list for a reason. I want more feedback on how to approach it and we are growing little by little organically as is.

the focus should be on UX & performance Where do you see the UX or performance lacking? These can always get better everywhere, but I'm wondering if there are specific areas you see trouble.

2 sats \ 1 reply \ @02d10975a1 13 Sep 2021 freebie

Well, one specific issue is the "loading screen" on page loads which happens because content is rendered client-side. It's not a huge issue but kind of annoying.

14 sats \ 0 replies \ @calle 12 Sep 2021

make SN invite only? pls don't ❤️

12 sats \ 1 reply \ @cozy 13 Sep 2021

Incredible work, love the site. Love the roadmap. Just in terms of GUI, it could be better than the UI of Hackernews. Like, for notifications, it'd be nice if I could just get a modal or dropdown instead of having to go to a new page. I know this is contrary to the logic of HN, but I would enjoy it--perhaps other wouldn't, just throwing it out there.

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 13 Sep 2021

This is a good rec. So more like Reddit's notification system. That makes sense ... Easier to see if it's worth engaging with.

12 sats \ 3 replies \ @theloadedshaman 12 Sep 2021 freebie

confused after i hit "fund" button that address that i copy i not accepted in a binance withdrawl... am i understanding this wrong?

1 sat \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 12 Sep 2021

Binance probably doesn’t support Lightning yet. Stacker News only supports fund/withdrawal on Lightning currently.

Are you familiar with the lightning network? I can send you some articles if you need help.

3 sats \ 1 reply \ @theloadedshaman 12 Sep 2021 freebie

thanks for the reply. i figured the "ln" in front was a lightning addy after i wrote that. im sorry i really am a noob. will try to send it thru another wallet..