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I have never seen a successful community site that raised that much money before getting traction. What are some successful community sites?

by TekMol 9y ago

djsumdog 9y ago
Ugh...sadly Voat. They recently ran into budget problems (they run at $6k/month) and were able to raise enough to keep running for a few months and get volunteers help move it off Azure's overpriced hosting. So there's an example of site, without much money, building off their community. It's filled with a lot of hate, racism and extremism. I still like browsing it, just to see the opinions, try to understand where others are coming from and expose myself to viewpoints I disagree with. There is some good content and some viewpoints I agree with, but I wish more reasonable people on there weren't so drown out. I think moderate people do try, but after barrages of downvotes, they give up (new accounts can't downvote either; you have to build 100 comment points -- which keeps that group think going).
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  > without much money, building off their community. It's filled with a lot of hate, racism and extremism Probably not helped when they get kicked off payment processors or fundraiser sites for openly hosting underage nudity, sorry, "jailbait"...
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    They banned all their jailbait subverses a while back. I think most services kick them off just due to the hate-speak.
  - obstinate 9y ago
    Their front page right at this moment has several unpleasant articles, including three Islamophobic items, one anti-Semitic item, and one joke accusing liberals of equating conservative economic policy and racism. So that's probably not helpful to their prospects.
- RUG3Y 9y ago
  Voat was better in the beginning but the no-rules atmosphere and underdog nature of the site attracted a lot of a$$holes too.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    SSC wrote an interesting thing about this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centralized-web/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centrali... Tl;dr, If you build a service that offers freedom, the first users are going to be the people that don't have freedom elsewhere. Which is mostly unsavory people. So voat attracts radical right wingers that are banned everywhere else. Torrents are mainly used for infringing copyright. Tor is full of illegal and disturbing content. And bitcoin is mainly used for shady stuff like ransomware.
- axlprose 9y ago
  > new accounts can't downvote either; you have to build 100 comment points -- which keeps that group think going At least they're more generous than HN's downvote restrictions. But I suspect it's the upvote limitations on voat that turn newcomers off more than anything, since every other site encourages you to handout 'likes'/upvotes like candy, making it quite the culture shock when you run up against that wall. That being said, it's hard to tell whether any of these voting mechanisms are actually any better at producing fruitful discussion than a plain old-school forum. Seems to me like having any kind of voting inevitably leads to amplifying the effects of group think.
  - Namrog84 9y ago
    Yeah. I wonder how it'd effect usage if down votes from user with under X points simply don't count or have minimal impact. But the user would never really know?

I have never seen a successful community site that raised that much money before getting traction. What are some successful community sites?

by TekMol 9y ago

I have never seen a successful community site that raised that much money before getting traction. What are some successful community sites?

djsumdog 9y ago

Ugh...sadly Voat. They recently ran into budget problems (they run at $6k/month) and were able to raise enough to keep running for a few months and get volunteers help move it off Azure's overpriced hosting. So there's an example of site, without much money, building off their community. It's filled with a lot of hate, racism and extremism. I still like browsing it, just to see the opinions, try to understand where others are coming from and expose myself to viewpoints I disagree with. There is some good content and some viewpoints I agree with, but I wish more reasonable people on there weren't so drown out. I think moderate people do try, but after barrages of downvotes, they give up (new accounts can't downvote either; you have to build 100 comment points -- which keeps that group think going).

FireBeyond 9y ago
> without much money, building off their community. It's filled with a lot of hate, racism and extremism Probably not helped when they get kicked off payment processors or fundraiser sites for openly hosting underage nudity, sorry, "jailbait"...
- djsumdog 9y ago
  They banned all their jailbait subverses a while back. I think most services kick them off just due to the hate-speak.
- obstinate 9y ago
  Their front page right at this moment has several unpleasant articles, including three Islamophobic items, one anti-Semitic item, and one joke accusing liberals of equating conservative economic policy and racism. So that's probably not helpful to their prospects.
RUG3Y 9y ago
Voat was better in the beginning but the no-rules atmosphere and underdog nature of the site attracted a lot of a$$holes too.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  SSC wrote an interesting thing about this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centralized-web/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centrali... Tl;dr, If you build a service that offers freedom, the first users are going to be the people that don't have freedom elsewhere. Which is mostly unsavory people. So voat attracts radical right wingers that are banned everywhere else. Torrents are mainly used for infringing copyright. Tor is full of illegal and disturbing content. And bitcoin is mainly used for shady stuff like ransomware.
axlprose 9y ago
> new accounts can't downvote either; you have to build 100 comment points -- which keeps that group think going At least they're more generous than HN's downvote restrictions. But I suspect it's the upvote limitations on voat that turn newcomers off more than anything, since every other site encourages you to handout 'likes'/upvotes like candy, making it quite the culture shock when you run up against that wall. That being said, it's hard to tell whether any of these voting mechanisms are actually any better at producing fruitful discussion than a plain old-school forum. Seems to me like having any kind of voting inevitably leads to amplifying the effects of group think.
- Namrog84 9y ago
  Yeah. I wonder how it'd effect usage if down votes from user with under X points simply don't count or have minimal impact. But the user would never really know?