Hey Riho! We certainly haven't given up. We're actually doing another AMA tomorrow with @debbiemillman. Hope you all can come out and we can have another discussion!

We've had Halli from Ueno and Dan Mall from Superfriendly over the past few months. These have been posted and pinned to the top of the feed.

If you would like to have weekly discussion threads, please post it! Or reach out at matt@designernews.co if you'd like to kick off anything in a more systematic way.

As always, we're happy to have the discussion -- if anyone wants to chat further about getting more involved, please email me!

Matt

To be honest, I think this community is the most active whenever a topic like this gets opened. Which is every 3-4 months. I've kind of given up at this point. Thats not to say that I wouldn't like to see it become active again, but there's just no saving it I'm afraid.

Today, DN looks like a link dump, with rare insightful discussions drowning in a sea of random shares, and we all contributed to it, one link at a time.

Maybe DN is trying to be too many things at once. Maybe it should focus on one particular thing, like these platforms do:

• Playbook is great for career advice
• Sidebar is the go-to place for curated design links
• BrandNew is where designers comment on popular Branding projects

This happened because of "open registration," which opened the spam doors.

While this was a gated community, this place was just awesome. Now... listicles, how-to's, ugly Dribbble shots, "trends" posts, endless UX hot takes, and run-of-the-mill "show site" submissions are the norm.

Well, even though I agree with you, I must point out which in my opinion is the greatest reason why DN has collapsed: personal agendas, lack of altruism. The truth is people post and comment when they want something in exchange: in most cases attention on their work, projects, and whatnot. People don't interact for the sake of a better, more comprehensive community, that's a mere utopia. People do it so they can leverage a group of other people. Truth be told, it is a matter of mentality which will hardly change – Dribbble is exactly the same.

Seems like we could also default links to open up to the thread here on DN, instead of opening up the link itself.

It's almost like they don't want you to start a comment thread on links shared because it's harder to get to the thread than to just open the link.

There used to be a time when the site was ripe with inspiration and news being posted from designers with diverse backgrounds. But then came the gatekeeper silicon valley product designers that took over and anyone who posted anything other than a product design post, trend reports, silicon valley news, or sketch update was ignored. Don't get me started on the crap marketer medium gurus.

Despite being called Designer News (not Product Designer News) why would graphic designers, branding designers or any other designer want to contribute? The invite to those people were never really there. Everything became really focused and policed. No diversity of thought. No one cares.

RIP DN

I've been saying it since forever and it is still true:

Designers use platforms exclusively to promote themselves or their business.

That is the big problem. If you make Platforms that evolve around attention, which increase its exposure with increasing attention to it, you will always attract a crowd that mostly sees this as an opportunity to milk the audience.

Also, many designers do not care about this stuff. And the designers who do are busy working. Look at this "10k Website Process". They are literally trying to milk designers who don't know better. We have let this happen forever. People who praise this behaviour are contributing just as much.

Our Design "Community" is driven by ego, money, and reinventing the same job title over and over again, just exclude someone else.

I agree with your suggestions completely and I think they would really improve the community, but, and its a big but, it will interfere with monetization of this website. This website relies on sponsored content, ads. Nothing more. The more exposure, the more impressions. It feeds itself, because as more people come to consume the content here, so will people who intend to milk this by posting some nonsense about their mediocre icon library, 200€ Sketch Plugin and clickbait titles about shaming you who is using anything other but whatever is currently popular.

I think you are trying to solve an issue that cannot be solved. Designernews going down is just a side effect of this issue.

If you really wanna improve the community, designers need to stop:

• using twitter as their main source of news
• start making their own platforms, making their own sites instead of relying on big companies
• find solutions themselves instead of relying on cookie cutter solutions
• never, ever again go on dribbble or behance
• stop stardoming people who are not actually contributing. Someone who makes something pretty is not worth it. We are all capable of making something nice to look at.

Top shelf content: https://www.designernews.co/stories/104996-feedback-on-website-design-singapore-carpet-cleaning

I'll throw my two cents in.

Between 2016 and 2018 (I know that is fairly late to the game of DN), I was a daily visitor that looked forward to the new, and relevant content. The discussions were insightful and always left me with a new perspective on a given topic. In 2019, all of that slowly faded away and so did a good amount of users.

Assumption #1

The top players stopped contributing to the site over a period of time which had a greater effect than could have been expected. I remember seeing stats for reddit that showed a small fraction of redditors generate the majority of the content and discussions that drive engagement.

Assumption #2

Moderation/moderators are key to the success of a community. I think DesignerNews got hit by the perfect storm of system changes, a loss of the key contributors to the site, and a lack of proper moderation. This opened the doors for the flood of self-promotion and surface level content that gets old after a month or two.

Assumption #3

People have to make money. It's no secret that DN made it's money through the job board. As long as enough people were visiting the site, job board impressions and visits were enough to keep the employers happy. If the revenue stream is happy then DN is successful. If the business model is to keep the job boards full, the content portion of the site will ultimately fail.

Theory

The top contributors matured as designers and found new areas to focus on. I think once you get past a certain level in your career, you care less about the trends and updates that used to inspire you and they are solving bigger, much more specific design problems. Where I am now, I don't necessarily care about the latest trends or the best tool to build a design system. I want to know how you overcame roadblocks to implementing a design system. Those questions aren't answered in "Best Design Systems of 2019." They are answered in deep discussions with experienced designers who want to share their stories and help others.

How can DN get back to it's roots?

I'd say go private again, shrink the user base, and get a team of moderators involved to seed discussions. This would push a lot of the self-promo, thoughtless content out, and could bring back designers that bring authentic content to the site. A random AMA and banning Medium articles is a quick win that doesn't have much impact on the culture.

I really do hope for the best but it's going to take a big change to see a big change.

Until then, I've gone back to the tried and true RSS feed. I found that it's hard to find a good discussion online so I cut the middle man and curated my feeds directly from the source.

My answer is that Twitter is a better resource if you follow the right people who bubble up the stuff worth reading. I don't care about the community aspect per se because I find web folks to be mostly strange.

Curious: How much does it cost (monthly) to run something like DN?

This place has been dead for quite some time now for the reason the OP states. The owners simply do not care. The site has been overrun with spam, blatant self-promotion, posts about every little figma and sketch update, and other useless crap. Pull the plug, it's dead Jim.

Where do you go now for community like this?

I've joined a few Slack channels, but mostly they've been regional or otherwise not quite a good fit.

I agree. It's such a shame. Designernews used to be my source for finding interesting articles/sites/discussions. Now I rarely come here if at all.

I agree with some of your suggestions. They should consider reviving this site otherwise, it will end up being "dead".

The self-promotion and spam keeps me away most days.

If you work at, say, Invision and you post here about your Invision blog. I'm not going to read it. It's just sideways advertising and rarely adds value to the site.

Downvotes would be nice, though I understand the rationale in not having them.

More guidance/input by staff (the AMAs are great) and site owners.

Better algorithm for top posts. It seems like I'm always seeing bs mixed in with good posts on the homepage.

Search could be improved.

Surfacing old content. It seems like there are a half-dozen "best backpack" posts, but having a way to surface these classic/active posts would be a good idea. Best Of DN?

I still visit at least 4 times a week, but my sessions keep getting shorter and shorter. Scan the Top posts…maybe click a link…see a ton of spam posts and leave.

I hope the site owners can figure it out and get this place hoppin' again.

what are you contributing here Riho? How about post some news once in awhile? All that's needed is the freshest new site designs and what is new in design. The hottest new site launches, trends, tips on maybe achiveing similar effects and implementing strategies. It's simple. Discussion follows if stuff is good, but mostly the site works well as a link aggregator (and similarly on twitter). That's it!

I do appreciate the AMA efforts too, takes organizing and attracting time from big names/busy ppl.

Weekly discussion threads about design subjects

I like that idea! I think that would help a lot. Conversation starters tends to get people engaged.

I've recently started engaging more in the Designers Guild Facebook group. It seems like there's a little more discussion there.

I remember when DN started it seemed like the intent was to create a community like Hacker News but for design. I agree the interest around that agenda has changed. I think the industry has changed.

I would hate to see places like this die out. I hope we can implement some of the ideas you had to keep it interesting around here!

I honestly think the design community in it's current state isn't the right audience for these types of websites (HackerNews type-sites); it will always result in shameless self-promotion and listicles (again for self-promotion).

DN is not dead yet! So alive!

Hello, folk

I'm working on something similar which solve these problems.actually, I'm building a community platform for designers where they can share, write or discuss their ideas, case studies, tutorials and much more. something similar to dev.to but for designers.I think writing is essential then just showcasing the visual aesthetics on platform like dribbble.

Any thoughts and suggestion would be appreciated.

As long as DN continues to be a dumping ground for spam, it’s going nowhere.

https://www.designernews.co/stories/105060-3-minutes-typing-speed-test

https://www.designernews.co/stories/105059-how-to-unblock-gmail-account-

https://www.designernews.co/stories/105051-dental-service-organization--beacon-dental-partners

https://www.designernews.co/stories/105050-c2-management--reuse--recycling-well-c2-it

I spend much more time talking about design on Twitter, in different Slack communities, and irl at meetups.

For me, this format doesn't work well for discussion - but I might just be pining for vBulletin forum days.

It's as much the content uploaded (or lack thereof) as it is about how form is not necessarily following function. Example:

• Text, whilst clean, is not optimised for reading anything longer than a tweet.
• It's not at all accessible (there are 300+ accessibility breaks on this page alone).
• The threading is confusing
• It's difficult to differentiate users/commenters
• The visual and typographic hierarchy is weak

I also think the site is trying to do and be too many things at once. Is it a community for discussion? And/or is it link posting and upvoting platform to seperate the wheat from the chaff in our noisy industry? Is it a podcast? Is it a job board? If it's going to be multiple things, perhaps it's there should be some sort of dashboard or homepage rather than trying to force discussion to be the carrier?

Who is DN? What do they want, why do they exist? What are you trying to achieve? Why is this site any different or better than using Discord, Twitter, Slack, etc - what's the USP? Looks like it's mostly been an UI redesign but there's no content or community or product strategy.

Well, what's the purpose of DN exactly? A platform to let people voice their opinions, or a place where designers go to interact with curated content managed by community staffs?

Why would anyone agree to do an AMA on a dead website?

While we're here having this discussion -- what people do you want to hear from in the form of an AMA? We want to keep organizing these, but only if it's interesting and people want to engage.

Any suggestions as to who you'd all want to see do an AMA?

While I'm quite new to DN, I came with high expectations tbh. I was expecting a lot of discussions, tips & tricks or any type of interaction. It's just another version of Quora where people shamelessly promote products, themselves or whatever.

Not sure how that can be handled but I don't necessarily agree with the poster as it should be the community that keeps the wheels turning. No effort from the site owners would do any good if it's just a easier to penetrate PH (which is already made extremely easy).

But hey, the 'x site is dying' post always works. But to the contrary of what I saw on different platforms the community really wants DN to work. I believe we can work from there.

Why don't we open source DN and allow the community to run it?

Over the last couple of months, I have caught myself visiting HeyDesigner way more often than DN, mainly because of the absence of spam and a shortlist of new links/posts. But still, I miss the exchange/discussion like it is taking place on PH/HN.

Local communities tend to be more helpful and well managed.

It was damn good the first year.. At some point some Grad students should study this unique phenom.. it could just be normal entropy curve after X time.. nothing lasts forever.

These communities frequently die off, not due to owner disinterest typically, but due to the user base being so fickle.