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Show HN: Trueq.io – A New Q&A Platform for Developers
- dsumer 6y agoOver the last 6 months we've spent most of our free time developing our side hustle. It's called TrueQ and is a new Q&A platform for developer. Of course we know there are a handful of other platforms out there which already do this job, but we strive to deliver a platform which really focusses on its community and gives you a nice UX when describing your software development problem or providing an answer for it. We have many plans for the platform and are already developing future features which will make the platform more unique. Nevertheless after 6 months of development in complete privateness, it is time to tell other people about it and gather feedback - that's why we're here. We would love to hear what you guys are thinking about TrueQ and would really appreciate if you help us building a new community by spreading the word and start engaging with us on our platform. If you're interested about the tech-stack or want to know more about our journey you can read about it here: https://trueq.io/our-journey https://trueq.io/our-journey
- jitl 6y agoCan you describe what makes your code editor UX better than StackOverflow’s code editor?
- viraptor 6y agoSO has a code editor? Do you mean the text box with ``` for code boundaries?
- asiachick 6y agoMaybe this? https://stackoverflow.blog/2014/09/16/introducing-runnable-javascript-css-and-html-code-snippets/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2014/09/16/introducing-runnable-j... Though I'm mostly fine with ```
- asiachick 6y agoCurious what you think will make your site better? Will you have upvotes and downvotes on questions? Are all questions on topic? Opinion questions, duplicate questions, questions about general software usage (how to change a color in photoshop), not software questions (how to bake a cake) Will there be moderators? Tags? Tag moderators? The first question I saw as clearly an attempt to gamify the user's rep. They asked a very basic question and then answer it (poorly) and checked their answer as the correct answer. S.O. has runnable snippets. Will you do that too? https://stackoverflow.blog/2014/09/16/introducing-runnable-javascript-css-and-html-code-snippets/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2014/09/16/introducing-runnable-j... Just curious what your vision is
- emrehan 6y agoIMHO, the popularity of Stackoverflow is powered by search engine results rather than their community. If they fail to create such a community, it’s probably hard to establish one around a Q&A app. In a competition like this where network effects play a huge role, your app must be orders of magnitude better for some niche. It could be about revenue sharing, decentralization or something better.
- xupybd 6y agoStackoverflow can be a bit off putting if your question is considered off topic. Some people zealously close questions without really reading the content.
- politician 6y agoAll questions are off topic on SO. At least, that's been my experience.
- asiachick 6y agoSince I answer 10-20 questions a week I happen to know that all questions are not off topic. It's more likely you asked an of topic question. The 3 most common off topic questions 1. Asking for a library recommendation I want to do X? What library should I use? 2. Asking for debugging help without putting the code in the question My code doesn't work. Here's a link to my github repo 3. Asking an overly general question How do I 3d in Python?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- politician 6y agoWhen I used to use the site several years ago, I would spend easily a hour or two crafting a question to avoid the train of mods and trolls questioning why I wasn’t doing it using their preferred framework or tool. I would write a clear question with context, and include the things I tried but didn’t work. It got to a point where writing a question that would pass the gauntlet of mods and people looking for easy rep would result in no answers. My takeaway was that SO only works for superficial questions where folks could maximize their rep/hour. These days I go directly to the maintainers on GitHub or through commercial support. If those channels aren’t available, I avoid the dependency. Crowdsourced answers to technical issues worked for the first few years on SO, but game theory has ruined it.
- TenJack 6y agoWhat are the main differentiators between this and Stackoverflow?
- pier25 6y ago> Dark-Mode first because your eyes are worth it Dark mode is actually worse for your eyes. There are plenty of studies that have shown bright text over dark background is less readable and produces eye strain. Also reading bright text over black is painful for people with astigmatism. Obviously people don't like going from dark to bright but that happens precisely because of dark mode being so popular. At the very least, if you're going to follow the trend of having a dark mode you should provide a light mode (which this site does). Either have some sort of switch or use CSS to determine the OS setting. I've been using dark mode in my code editors since 2011 or so and went back to light mode recently. I'm certain dark mode was a detriment to my eyes as I've been able to go back to my old glasses too.
- mosselman 6y agoI have recently switched from dark to light as well in my editor and I have noticed it is easier to read darker text over a light background as well. You, or at least I, notice this as well when I turn off Trueq.io's dark mode on the pages with more text like the 'about' page. You are being down voted, but not countered, so it seems like people are being emotional about this for some reason. Ah well, to each his own.
- dsumer 6y agoJust wanting to state that we did not down vote on pier25's comment. Everyone should feel free to use the theming mode he / she likes best.
- pier25 6y agoI don't know if there are any studies about why dark mode is so popular these days, but my guess is because of using screens on poor lit rooms or even in complete darkness. In those conditions it's super annoying to switch from a dark UI to a bright one which I guess its why light mode gets so much irrational hate. Obviously users should be able to choose what works best for them. I'm in my 40s now and I care much more now about my vision. I guess most proponents of dark mode are actually much younger than me.
- indentit 6y agoWhat are your goals for sustainability? Will you charge for use of the website or have advertisements? I've always been a bit sad that the websites we use most (GitHub, StackOverflow) are closed source, and was kinda hoping this would be an open source reimagining of SO, so it would be interesting to learn more about what differentiates TrueQ. I understand you are very happy with your post editor, and that its kinda more for discussions than "solve this problem" like SO is, but there are other sites in the StackExchange network which could also fill the same role :)
- dsumer 6y agoWe are for sure not gonna show ads. We are currently experimenting with different financing models, let's see. We actually want to become a developer platform which will include much more features than just Q&A.
- bastijn 6y agoRule number one for a Q&A site should be to not land you on a marketing landing page as main page. Put your questions as main page. Your layout is having issues atm. It shows less questions in a single screen as compared to SO. It is quite an eyestrain with all the colors (every tag another color, multiple colors in design, icons I do not understand like the eyes etc.) I see comments run out of my screen on ios, iPhone 11 max. In this space you have one big competitor. Your landing page, which you so prominently slammed in my face, should state why you are worth switching to. Right now you give 3 things that SO already has for ages (and better). In addition to all the things they have and you miss it makes it unlikely I will visit again..
- XCSme 6y ago> Rule number one for a Q&A site should be to not land you on a marketing landing page as main page So quora.com is doing it wrong?
- adventured 6y agoQuora is doing a lot of things 'wrong.' Wrong as in, choices that produce a low quality service (eg dark patterns, maximizing for volume of content which has led to vast amounts of marketing spam posing as real content), not wrong as in they have no traffic. They get to play by different rules for the same reason Pinterest does, inside-SV favoritism: Google protects Quora from being punished for all the things they do that directly violate Google's search engine rules that would get anybody else penalized heavily [1]. It has been talked about on HN for many years, it's clearly a different set of rules. Further, Quora - as with Stack Overflow and Wikipedia - had the benefit of arriving on the scene before Google closed the door to easy SEO, easy search engine traffic. Quora is already inside, entrenched Web bloatware, they can get away with more in part because of that. [1] I'll provide a prominent example of this Google / Quora SEO fraud in action. If you check out this Quora Q&A page: "What makes Napoleon Bonaparte such a famous icon?" https://www.quora.com/What-makes-Napoleon-Bonaparte-such-a-famous-icon https://www.quora.com/What-makes-Napoleon-Bonaparte-such-a-f... And then if you, as a human, click on a right side bar of links ("Related Questions"; on mobile it's just below the top answer) - when you perform that action, they blur out your experience and present you with a content blocking prompt that hides all the content from you, attempting to force a sign-up. One of Google's fundamental content rules is that you must present page content to them, to their bot, the same as you do a normal human user of your site. If you violate that, much less do so egregiously, they'll penalize your content heavily. Do you suppose Quora is giving the Google bot that same experience, blocking Google bot's every attempt to crawl from page to page and trying to force Google bot to sign-up using a dark pattern? Of course not, and thus it's fraud in action. Google doesn't give a shit because they have zero integrity as an organization. It's one of the more blatant examples of Google hypocrisy as a search engine and it has been on-going for many years now, and pointed out constantly in tech circles and yet it persists, so we know Google is doing it with full knowledge and intent (thus it's an inside-SV favoritism action, Quora gets to play by different rules than everybody else).
- drchiu 6y agoI think a strategy for launching something like this where an existing incumbent already exists (ie. StackOverflow) would be to niche down into a single programming topic, such that the answers within this micro community are much better than the ones found elsewhere. When this happens, then branch out. Good luck on the launch!
- adventured 6y agoIt'll be almost impossible to get traction against a service that is already serving the community well, as with Stack Overflow. There are many gripes about Stack Overflow (which is common with success), however it still actually does its job well. To beat them you have to be drastically better (as it is they have to become a lot worse, or it'll require a technology inflection that they miss). You're entirely correct about the only way to approach it, bowling pin wise. You have to narrow and find something you can own, something you can beat them at in a big way and grow out of that niche. Otherwise something broad like this risks languishing with small amounts of activity across many topics and not enough answers or questions per to really get momentum rolling to sustain it all.
- Kaknut 6y agoHow big is the community as of now? Looks promising though in terms of offerings but is the audience even 10% StackOverflow?
- yreg 6y agoThis post is them showing TrueQ to the world for the first time, so until now the community was basically just the creators' friends.
- gdsdfe 6y agoCongrats the popup that you can close have just reduced my visit to 2 second ... I don't care about your story
- dang 6y agoPopups can be annoying, but please do not break the site guidelines like this, and particularly not the Show HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Internet forums tend to slide by default into people being jerks and assholes to each other, and that is particularly poisonous in response to people who are trying to share their work. We don't want a culture here where they get attacked and flamed for doing that. If you wanted to respectfully share what was troublesome about a popup, that of course would be fine.
- gdsdfe 6y agoI was just giving feedback ... Maybe sarcasm doesn't translate well in writing
- boffinism 6y agoSo the screenshot on https://trueq.io/our-journey https://trueq.io/our-journey shows one person asking a question and another person, instead of answering, complaining that the question has been asked in the wrong place/way. That's the sort of thing I'd want a new Q&A site to avoid, not highlight!
- dsumer 6y agothanks for your feedback! we changed the image
- dsumer 6y agoWe really want to say thanks to you guys! Honestly we didn't even thought about reaching such a big audience. We now already have some registered users on our platform (apart from family and friends) and also the first people are engaging with answering questions. Of course there are still pain points in our platform and we know that it is difficult to compete with others feature-wise after 6 months of development in our free time. But we are confident that we can make TrueQ an outstanding platform in the next months & years if we stay on it. We are definitely very thankful for all your comments and feedback, exactly that's what we were missing in the last months and it helps us guiding TrueQ in the right direction. And that already the first people are really engaging on TrueQ gives us an extra motivation boost! This is what is breathing life into TrueQ. Thank you!!
- arthtyagi 6y agoJust wondering how is this better than StackExchange?
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoThe landing page is kind of slick and vacuous, with cute little images. That feels like marketing did it, not engineers. Perhaps that's unfair but it's a bad sign for me. "Dark-Mode first / because your eyes are worth it" That's not based on any evidence, just what you want to give. It's not a selling point for me. I guess you allow it to be changed so I guess it's not a problem either. https://trueq.io/create-question https://trueq.io/create-question, well literally you can't even fill in fields - as in, type in text - without javascript enabled. That alone will kill it for me. Also how does it compare to SO? Just some feedback - good luck!
- lolc 6y agoI tried finding out what usage terms would be with content posted to the site. I don't think I want to use it because I still don't know. I only found the this section in the terms: > Content and postings > > You may print a copy of any part of the Website and Services for your personal or non-commercial use. > > You may submit new content and comment on the existing content on the Website. By uploading or otherwise making available any information to Ankhbayar Batsukh e.U., you grant Ankhbayar Batsukh e.U. the unlimited, perpetual right to distribute, display, publish, reproduce, reuse and copy the information contained therein. [...] https://trueq.io/legal/terms-of-service https://trueq.io/legal/terms-of-service Consider adding an overt statement like Stackoverflow does: https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing Because I don't want to guess around about this. And if you keep the "non-commercial" in there, I'm gone. Because that's a huge can of worms I don't like the taste of.
- dsumer 6y agothx for your hint! we've adjusted it on our page (you may have to reload with clearing your browser's cache before). we will deploy a new version in the evening where we'll also include a link to the license. cheers!
- vladsanchez 6y agoSignUp to Ask a question? WTF?