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The Evolution of DN

over 4 years ago from

Hello DN’ers!

First off, thanks for being here and voicing your opinions on next steps in the evolution of DN. We appreciate it. DN exists because of you, and it will continue to exist because from the contributions/engagement of the community. Let’s work through this together and make DN the best it can be. I’m hoping this thread can be for that discussion.

Things we’ve heard so far:

  • Get rid of the downvotes! Done. Should be live Monday. It was an experiment that didn’t work, as people are misusing the functionality and pushing down perfectly good content. At least that’s how it appears to me. Reasonable people disagree with the effectiveness of downvoting, but I think it’s clear it’s not working in its current form.
  • Invite only, or some sort of more restrictive sign up system.
  • Blacklist certain domains from being able to post.
  • Implement downvotes only for users with a certain number of Karma, and hide content with a number of downvotes.

What are we missing? Also, we’re looking to kick up the podcast again -- any keen designers out there who want to take the lead ? Send us an email at hello@designernews.co

Thanks again!

Matt

52 comments

  • Aldo ValdezAldo Valdez, over 4 years ago

    Hope this will work. So far over 500 people subscribed to the subreddit that was created. Seems you might be too late already...

    27 points
    • Jamie K, over 4 years ago

      what is the subreddit? r/designernews seems to only have one post

      1 point
    • Steven Lamar, over 4 years ago

      I got tired of being banned from DN and having to create new accounts for expressing "controversial" opinions. This community is way too sensitive. I think it's because everyone is afraid to say something real, because people tie their profiles to their real names and twitter accounts. On reddit everything is anonymous and I predict we will see a lot more honest critiques and discussions. Would love to see some of those posts I got banned for, posted to reddit to see the difference in how people talk about them.

      3 points
      • Taurean BryantTaurean Bryant, over 4 years ago

        Hell yeah. Now when we share comments that are normally so bad that moderators have to intervene because it's dragging down the quality of the community we don't have to worry about being banned.

        1 point
      • Ryan MackRyan Mack, over 4 years ago

        I could see that playing out.

        1 point
      • Matthew Hollingsworth, over 4 years ago

        Hey Stephen! We can take a look and try to explain some of the bannings if you'd like. We try to only remove the content that breaks the rules set out in the guidelines. Although they leave some room for interpretation, it's our job to make the bannings consistent and clear. If you have a question about a specific case, please feel free to send me an email (hello@tinyboards.co) and I can give you a better explanation.

        0 points
    • Ryan MackRyan Mack, over 4 years ago

      Over 1,400 /r/DesignNews subscribers now.

      1 point
    • Lee Fuhr, over 4 years ago

      How can I get that subreddit in Panda? Panda as my default new tab (even works in Safari by just using the web app URL) is the only reason I continue to use DN.

      (Panda: https://usepanda.com )

      Btw, the full URL to the subreddit for easy clickin': https://www.reddit.com/r/DesignNews

      1 point
      • Aaron Wears Many HatsAaron Wears Many Hats, over 4 years ago

        Is panda still an abhorrent memory leaker? I stopped using it ages back because it was so poorly implemented.

        0 points
        • Andrew C, over 4 years ago

          I quit too. Poor performance and I found I was just perusing the same 3-5 sites anyway. Easier to do w bookmarks.

          1 point
        • Lee Fuhr, over 4 years ago

          Huh, I haven't noticed a problem, but I'm way open to a replacement if you know one.

          0 points
  • Ken Em, over 4 years ago

    Oh, one more suggestion to add to my previous list ... fix search. It's beyond broken to the point of being mostly useless.

    23 points
  • Andrew C, over 4 years ago

    You need to get interesting posts on the site daily. I come back once every 3-5 days and see the same articles on the front page. Doesn’t make me feel like there’s an urgency to check this place out to stay relevant on news.

    On the weeks there’s a slew of new things to read I generally check back more.

    14 points
  • Joe Blau, over 4 years ago

    Over the past 3 years, I've slowly faded off of DN. There are some great members on here and I can't pinpoint exactly what's caused me to drift off but I think one more point that needs to be added is a commitment to continually building the community.

    There were super cool events when I first joined that led to earning colors which have gone by the wayside. Cool things like the pixel header and pixel portrait were also awesome little details that kept this site exciting, but there are no real innovations in that area. It seems like the site is just in maintenance mode and I'm not sure that simply fixing current complaints without a commitment to future is enough to keep this site going.

    13 points
  • Ken Em, over 4 years ago

    Well, I guess we should back up a sec ... The first thing that's needed is a commitment from management to make things better. Thus far, the "community" seems like an appendage dangling off the job board.

    8 points
    • Matthew Hollingsworth, over 4 years ago

      Fair enough, Ken. We're committed to making things better, and I'm sorry that this has felt like an appendage. First thing is the proactive moderation like you mention below. We're not going to all agree on what should be banned or not, but I can promise that we're going to be more active.

      0 points
  • Aaron Wears Many HatsAaron Wears Many Hats, over 4 years ago
    • Reddit isn't invite-only, works great
    • HN isn't invite-only, works great
    • Facebook isn't invite-only, it's a bucket of shit but still works alright
    • 99% of functioning communities online aren't invite-only, and work fine.

    The reason for that is active contributions by users as well as the mod team to regulate the type of content available. You can increase the restrictions like adding captchas, human-checked questions, moderating applications, but invite-only systems are bad and anyone suggesting them should feel bad.

    6 points
    • Rey AlejandroRey Alejandro, over 4 years ago

      dribbble? fb page with a secret question/answer to join?

      1 point
      • Aaron Wears Many HatsAaron Wears Many Hats, over 4 years ago

        Dribble isn't nearly as popular a site as you'd think, it's extremely designer-centric but it's about the only example of a workable invite-only site. Secret question/answers however are a good filter I think - but they aren't really an invite system

        1 point
  • Jesus GallentJesus Gallent, over 4 years ago

    The community is made by the members. Let's continue making it possible!

    4 points
  • ChrisArchitec t, over 4 years ago

    downvotes thing is a system/design choice and hope it works but more interested in what the reason all of a sudden it seems to be being misused, wasn't a problem 6 weeks to a few months ago?

    Also, I don't understand the rebellion coming from inactive/non-contributing members. They want discussion, fair, but about what? Fresh links and new content just needs to keep getting posted and then well, we can post comments on the 'news', afterall, DN is supposed to be mainly about news. Not here to talk about photoshop techniques or whatever really. Want to talk about the latest controversial branding launch? The latest website release? etc etc

    I use DN as a place to post links and keep the flow of fresh content going -- if it's brand new/in the news of the design world, I expect it to be posted on DN within the hour. (usually keeping an eye on the twitter acct for the heads up) And then we go from there!

    3 points
    • Matthew Hollingsworth, over 4 years ago

      Appreciate the feedback here Chris!

      The downvoting was removed because people were, generally speaking, misusing it. It was implemented only a few months ago to fight the spam issue, but a few people were automatically downvoting everything just (I think) to maintain their own content at the top. Bottom line - content was downvoted that shouldn't have been.

      Agreed on your sticky point, I'll re-pin it.

      0 points
      • ChrisArchitec t, over 4 years ago

        thx - so you don't know the source of the downvotes eh, as I was wondering why the misuse was more recent than not. Worth looking into no?

        0 points
        • Matthew Hollingsworth, over 4 years ago

          Yeah, we tried. It was probably a mix of things. It picked up over the past month from what I could see, to the point where most of the posts were immediately downvoted, and then slowly were upvoted back if the content was relevant. Best solution for us was to pull the downvoting all together. I honestly don't have a great answer for why we saw the misuse spike recently.

          0 points
          • Andrew C, over 4 years ago

            Maybe someone wanted to create the new DesignNews reddit group (which has low participation, btw) and was using downvotes to stir the beehive!? This conspiracy goes right to the top!

            0 points
  • ChrisArchitec t, over 4 years ago

    this post should be stickied or something, I came on after weekend and didn't know there'd been some official response to stuff.

    3 points
  • Joseph Peart, over 4 years ago

    Thanks for responding, and giving the design community a continued place to reference! We support DN!

    1 point
  • JC .JC ., over 4 years ago

    Here's the product problems for me that I think y'all need to design for:

    • encourage actual conversations in the comment section for all posts
    • make the frontpage more than a place for portfolios and self-promoting by writing about the same topics again and again.

    As you can see on the currently frontpage, posts don't get more than a couple of comments, probably because most of the content don't spark the creative conscious.

    A bigger abstract may be that your audience are most likely designers in the illustrative/graphic/UI design field. There really isn't much to talk about in those domains honestly that haven't been beaten to death.

    Ideally I would want DN to become similar to HackerNews in content and quality of comment/conversation. How you get there? May be a mix of marketing to certain users you want, better/more active moderators, and probably an iteration of the interface that encourages conversation (i personally do not like the layout of this site). Of course, all that requires whoever runs this site to actually put money and effort into it.

    1 point
    • Matthew Hollingsworth, over 4 years ago

      For sure, thanks for that feedback JC. I think bringing people to the site with different design perspectives could definitely encourage more conversation.

      0 points
  • Jrtorrents Dorman , over 4 years ago

    Good points! I think I said it when the downvoting system was introduced and right so.

    So far all I see are people complaining without making any relevant suggestions. What’s the guarantee that any new platform (or the new Reddit) will not turn out be the same thing? After all the same people are going to end up there!

    Again people are complaining of not enough interesting posts but they don’t post anything themselves.

    1 point
  • Ken Em, over 4 years ago

    • Proactive moderation / deletion of spam, instead of only reacting to it when it's reported. This can be helped by going back to invite-only.

    • Speed the site up. For whatever reason, it's easily 3-5x slower when I'm signed in. When I'm signed out, it's pretty fast. Weird.

    • Fix the duplicate URL warning dingus when new posts are made. This has been reported by users as being broken.

    • When duplicate topics do get posted (new version of Sketch ZOMG!!!!!), delete the dupes or close them and redirect to one topic.

    1 point
  • Nice ShoesNice Shoes, over 4 years ago

    DN has become a playground for people to sell their apps, products and tools. These posts get spam upvotes. I’m tired of seeing the front page hammered with Framer, Figma, Sketch posts.

    0 points
    • Andrew C, over 4 years ago

      I don't mind people posting new apps or something. But it feels like Figma's existence on these boards is to sell UIKits (to a bunch of designers?)

      0 points
  • Matt KMatt K, over 4 years ago

    There should be a commitment to surfacing new, quality, interesting content. Stuff is allowed to linger for days, meaning there's no need to check back regularly as little changes day-to-day. Compared with Hacker News, the difference is stark.

    Content seems to be mostly brand content strategy, rather than user-generated. While fine in short amounts, a whole page of links that go to figma/sketch/adobe etc is pretty dull.

    Plus commenting is basically shouting down a hole – why bother writing a thoughtful response if there's no discussion?

    0 points
  • Ken Em, over 4 years ago

    The fact that this thread only has 15 comments as of this writing is somewhat telling. And not in a good way. :|

    0 points
  • Rey AlejandroRey Alejandro, over 4 years ago

    Hi Matt,

    This is nice seeing that there's an actual moderator for designernews. I think it's not obvious until I click your profile.

    Suggestion: Put a caption on people user name in the comment section. : e.g community staff, UX Designer at X Company Make the up button look more like a button: e.g. producthunt Allow to add photos and play videos inline, embed prototype, meaning not going to a new link. Improve mobile website.

    0 points
    • Matthew Hollingsworth, over 4 years ago

      For sure! Thanks Rey, those are great suggestions. I think part of it is activity, which I plan on ramping up and becoming more visible as a mod.

      1 point
  • Account deleted over 4 years ago

    Yaaay dictatorial regime

    “People are pushing perfectly good content” can you please extend that? Maybe it’s actually a shit content but you and mods only fond of the topic? I mean whats your benchmark?

    Way to turn this place into a complete circle jerking playground.

    -7 points
    • Andrew C, over 4 years ago

      Give Mean Girls a (re)watch sometime, pal. Calling someone fat don’t make you skinny. Downvotes are silly because it incentivizes destructive behaviour over constructive behaviour.

      The only way to post better content is to... post better content.

      6 points
      • Account deleted over 4 years ago

        Downvotes are silly because it incentivizes destructive behaviour over constructive behaviour.

        why do you think that? for your opinion disliking is destructive. Following your logic I also shouldn't dislike mass murderers, killers and rapists because it's silly do dislike them and disliking something incentivizes destructive behaviour over constructive behaviour.

        Oh, I remember that there was an app posted on here. It was a 'school shooter app' where you've picked the shooter's weapon from your app and tried to look for an exit and some bullshittery like that. If search on DN searched properly I would have linked it but that doesn't work for dn lol. It was the most insensitive post I've ever seen on DN. That kinda stuff should be downvoted. Not only 'supported'

        idk why I keep posting here. This place is garbage.

        2 points
        • Andrew C, over 4 years ago

          I come here to read news and post comments. Not having anything to read because some people decided I'd be better off defeats those goals. It would be far FAR more constructive to simply post something better if you want better content.

          P.s. Continue to dislike mass murderers and rapists, though.

          0 points
    • Aaron Wears Many HatsAaron Wears Many Hats, over 4 years ago

      Come on dude, surely you've seen the endless list blogs and pointless 'look at my site' posts which lead you to third world "design" houses.

      I feel you're being disingenuous.

      0 points