3 Stacker News Improvement Ideas \ stacker news ~meta

3933 sats \ 27 comments \ @MerryOscar 23 Mar meta

1. Add Follower Graph

I would like the ability to 'follow' other stacker news users and have some kind of view that shows me all the posts from users I follow with the same time / sat value algorithm that the main pages use. This would give me the ability to 1) catch up on the best posts from people I follow and 2) find good posts early by following people I know post interesting things. The second point is also great for the earning incentive because it gives people another route to be first at upvoting great posts.

2. Reduce Territory Fees

The current cost of territories is a barrier to entry - and also incentivises territories that generate a lot of posts rather than very niche territories that maybe only rarely get posts but deliver incredible value with little hidden gems of the internet. I would love to see more niche territories like this and it would be cool if the incentives supported this by having lower fees. I think part of the issue here is the drop-down UI to select territories makes them feel like a limited list that need to generate a lot of content. Why not just surface territories in search with an option to pin your favourites?

3. Inbox View

I would like an option to save a post to some kind of inbox / read later list as often I'll spot a post that is quite long that I'd like to read but don't have the time immediately. I know the bookmarks feature exists and can be used for this but I think it's a slightly different thing more aimed at saving top posts to come back to rather than more of an inbox that I can check off the list once I've read the post.

Anyway just some ideas - overall stacker news is amazing so well done @k00b @kr @ek keep building!

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108 sats \ 0 replies \ @freetx 23 Mar

Regarding Territory Fees:

I think they should revamp the idea completely. Should be a one-time moderate fee (say 25K sats) to create a territory. Creators of territories receive a very small percentage of post made there (15%?) or maybe nothing at all.....Otherwise normal rules apply: Create post/comments to get zaps.

The idea of "owning a territory" just doesn't work in practice. There are a multitude of issues, but the core issue is there is no way to ever "protect" territories enough to make the model work. If a territory named "Photos" became hugely popular, whats to stop someone from simply creating "ReallyGoodPhotos" territories or "FunnyPhotos" and thereby undercutting the original. As it turns out, digital scarcity is a hard problem (haha)...

In order for SN to make money, they should institute a monthly user fee. Something small....maybe 500 sats per month? Something low enough so that the average active user can pay for it via their zap earnings every month automatically.

This then aligns incentives: Users try to create useful content and a site full of useful content draws more users, thus SN benefits from increased user fees.

119 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 23 Mar

You can follow people, by going to their bio and subscribing to them. Being able to sort on your followers stuff, is a great idea.

I don't know if they can dramatically lower territory fees and still generate meaningful revenue for the site. Someday, there will be sub-territories, which may serve the function you're looking for.

I agree with you about the inbox thing. Lately, I've been waking up to a very long list notifications and it would be nice if they somehow stayed highlighted until I interact with them.

106 sats \ 1 reply \ @MerryOscar OP 23 Mar

subscribing to people's posts via notifications is slightly different than following them in my view - I don't necessarily want to be notified for every post from my followers

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 23 Mar

I agree, but it performs the second function " find good posts early by following people I know post interesting things"

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @jakoyoh629 24 Mar

Lately, I've been waking up to a very long list notifications and it would be nice if they somehow stayed highlighted until I interact with them.

Good idea. Because after going to the notifications page, they are all marked as read and when it is a larger list it is easy to miss some.

81 sats \ 3 replies \ @frostdragon 23 Mar

I think the current territory fee structure incentivizes good posts, and I think the idea behind owning a territory is that you’re investing sats and possibly some moderation time into seeing high quality posts in the topic you’ve chosen. I would love it if the ownership fee went down, and if it did I’d also lower the posting fee (which probably isn’t going to cover the ownership fee either way), but I think lower cost means an overwhelming amount of territories, and the entire thing could get out of hand very quickly.

All that being said, I think it could make sense for someone to make sure duplicates aren’t getting created.

324 sats \ 2 replies \ @frostdragon 23 Mar

Also - fwiw, I would have probably just paid the one time fee for my territory, but I know this feature is probably going to change over time, so I’m a little worried about paying 3m sats only for the fee to go down or for permanent ownership to get phased out. I’d be curious to hear more of the dev’s vision and thoughts for this. cc @k00b @kr @ek

245 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 23 Mar

We have no plans to lower fees or phase out permanent ownership. As long as I'm alive, in charge, and stacker news' servers are running, permanent ownership means permanent.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @frostdragon 23 Mar

Siiiick.

28 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr 23 Mar

great feedback, some territory UI improvements are on the way.

re: the follower graph, do you imagine this being a separate feed? it’s possible to subscribe to stackers today, but their content shows up in your notifications which might not be the optimal format

240 sats \ 0 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 23 Mar

yes a separate feed would be great - I don't necessarily want to be notified for every post from my followers - the amazing thing about stacker news is the sats ranking algorithm which I would like applied to my follower graph

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @runningbitcoin 23 Mar

Maybe via single select drop-down on recent/ hot button similar to the primal client. I like that idea of a optionality.

107 sats \ 0 replies \ @dgy 23 Mar

Another enhancement would be versioning and editing of existing posts.

As there are a lot of longer posts that are like guides and it would be great if those articles could be updated and maintained for a longer time.

Small errors or input from other users may then be incorporated into the post after first publication.

In this case Stacker.news would be more like a wiki or Stackoverflow.

Maybe this could be realized as a new type.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 24 Mar

Territory fees are killer. Some posts cost quite a bit, and wjen they dont pick up traction, its a complete wash. I understand the economics behind it, but it still stings.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @gmd 23 Mar

Re: followers - Before I got into twitter k00b explained to me that reddit was for following topics and twitter was about following personalities. It would be cool if SN figured out some way to bridge the two different social media paradigms...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 23 Mar

Stacker Mail

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Bell_curve 23 Mar

Why is posting fee for history territory 1000???

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @BradSats 24 Mar

Looks free to me. I was able to post this for free: #477846

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @BradSats 24 Mar

After I posted #477846, I went back and acted as if I were trying to post another link. This time around it said there was a 10,000 sats fee to post. I believe it's on a 24-hour timer. Free again 24 hours after you last posted in that territory.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @r3drun3 23 Mar

Support all 3. Territory fees are broken.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @FallingD02 23 Mar

Pretty good ideas, personally I think the graphics would be excellent, and I totally agree with a reduction in commission in the territories that encourages us to publish more and participate more... Thanks for sharing your thoughts

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 23 Mar

What if territory fee was reduced to 50k sats/month for the first 3 months. If the territory is meeting a certain baseline of engagement (posts by non founder, zaps, comments etc) the fee remains 50k sats but if it isn't reaching an engagement threshold the fee jumps to 150k sats. This way people can keep niche territories if they really want them but we don't end up with 200 territories because the fee has been lowered.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 23 Mar

Good discussion here.

Overarching comment wrt territories: I don't think we've even begun to see the assorted things that will emerge out of territory economics once SN gets more scale. I expect lots of experiments and trials and innovation going forward. We Are Still Early etc.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheWildHustle 23 Mar

Great Ideas,

Reducing territory fees would be much appreciated.

Inbox View, brings SN one step closer to becoming the Yahoo of Bitcoin.

Adding a follower graph would be a huge change, not sure how it would effect incentives.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @riberet19 23 Mar

I'm all for the inbox and followers option, it's a very good point, the point of reduced fees I don't know how viable it will be.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 23 Mar

I'm not against any of your ideas but I don't feel a real need for any of them currently. SN is great as it is right now.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 23 Mar

Some really good ideas (not sure easy/hard they'd be to implement, but I'd happy use a follower graph and would selfishly love to be able to afford a territory).

One idea that kind of combines #1 and #2: A territory graph as well. I subscribe to three territories, but there are about 15-20 that are ones I'm a lot more likely to interact with, and if I had a feed of all of those posts separate from the firehose, that would be a great landing page.

(The question, I guess, is whether that would reduce interaction on the main page; it wouldn't for me, because I'd start at the territory graph and then go to the larger feed, but others may react differently.)