4 ms·

In 1 Sentence Explain...

34 points by diesellaws 15y ago

1 Sentence is an experimental concept in simplified explanations. Would love to get your feedback.

diesellaws 15y ago
1 Sentence is an experimental concept in simplified explanations. Thanks for trying it out!
- mcphilip 15y ago
  Nice site! One suggestion, remove the "In one sentence explain" from the posts. My eyes get tired of seeing that over and over...
  - diesellaws 15y ago
    Thanks mcphilip. Agreed. I will look into that. Thanks for the suggestion.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
corin_ 15y ago
Based on a very short look around I can't see this really being interesting att all. However, here's an idea I would like. The same website, fully moderated to the point that answers are not community-contributed, but sought out by website staff. For examplee, "In one sentence, explain what's great about SF for tech companies" you might reach out for an answer from pg, and a couple of other similar people. And doesn't have to be all tech, or even all well-known. For example one on there was "Explain why Justin Bieber is popular". The answer "because teenage girls exist" is entirely worthless, however perhaps there is someone in the music industry who could give an actual interesting thought, in one sentence, on that topic.
- fredoliveira 15y ago
  I like this idea, but I think you'd have a really hard time making money off of it. People won't be spending enough time on the site to extract enough value from their visit, and the moderators and contributors you talk about would need compensation for their work in making sure the content is spot on. The fact that this is intentionally microcontent-based makes this both interesting as well as VERY hard to monetize.
  - corin_ 15y ago
    You're right, my comment was based more on a "I'd love to read this site" than "here's a good business plan". Who knows, maybe it would be possible to either extract enough revenue from it to at least compensate moderators, or perhaps just become an interesting enough place that clever people are willing to pitch in and help out for free.
  - diesellaws 15y ago
    Another great point - monetization. It is not impossible to monetize this website via ad words etc, however for proper moderation you would definitely need real funding/cashflow. I didn't clarify this anywhere, however I would like to now: I never intended to make money off this website - at all. It is just a fun challenge and a problem I wanted to solve for myself: How can I find an explanation of something in only one sentence (currently, it's all over the internet and not in one central location). So 1Sentence was my quick attempt to fulfil this need.
- diesellaws 15y ago
  I appreciate your serious and well thought out feedback. I truly intended this to be a "meh, go for it" website while I focus on building my startup http://barkles.com http://barkles.com. It has definitely attracted the 'crazy' ones who post random and pointless info, but that is what I was aiming for. I can lock it down for login only, and do exactly what you suggest and it could actually become a great resource. However the full moderation that is needed will take me away from Barkles, which is not what was intended. Great to see that people are using it anyway, and having a lot of fun with it. Although, if you do have a look around you will see some great answers amongst the stupidity, which actually helps the people who posted that (everything links back to their websites). Again, thanks for the well thought out feedback, really appreciated. Diesel
hasenj 15y ago
I like the concept. Has the potential to be very addictive! Needs some moderation though, I see spams.
bennesvig 15y ago
Did this idea come from Reddit?
- diesellaws 15y ago
  No, I didn't use Reddit. It just came from my mind and want for a one sentence explanation to something.
- jh3 15y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. The first thing that popped into my head was r/explainlikeimfive.
rimantas 15y ago
Next move: 140characters. Sure, constrains are good and often lead to creativity but arbitrary constraints… I am not sure about.
- diesellaws 15y ago
  Thanks rimantas - we are working on a 200 character limit side by side debating platform - its currently in private Alpha testing and working well so far. http://barkles.com http://barkles.com
prof 15y ago
Is one sentance supposed to make it easier to understand? Because, for example the "explain programming"-answers made it more abstract and I guess people who does not know it would not understand it after "bla bla set of instructions bla bla". Making explanations smaller means higer abstractions which means it is often harder to understand. Edit: I do like small explanations. Like simple-wikipedia small.
- diesellaws 15y ago
  "Is one sentence supposed to make it easier to understand?" - To many = yes. In my eyes, this would be perfect to get an explanation of new trends (e.g. a year ago it may have been this: http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-social-media/ http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-social-media/) But overall it's an experiment, and I didn't think many would use it (Until I posted it here: Thanks HN community). So I will be seeing how it goes over the next few weeks, and see what the data suggests - but so far, I would say many love the simplicity of one sentence explanations. Cheers for your feedback!
hugh3 15y ago
The problem is that you don't get a good one-sentence explanation, you get a bunch of one-sentence explanations of widely different quality, frequently contradictory. I'm not sure this would help anyone understand anything. But to test it: I currently don't understand the Diffe-Helman Key Exchange, so I'm gonna read the explanations. [pause] Error establishing database connection. Well, so much for that experiment.
- diesellaws 15y ago
  In one sentence explain why the server is down: Error establishing database connection. (it worked! lol) But seriously though, thank you for your thoughts. I did not expect it to be such a hit on HN, and the website was thrown together in a couple of days. In response to this: "you get a bunch of one-sentence explanations of widely different quality, frequently contradictory." You are spot on. That is the world we live in - often widely different quality and frequently contradictory [in everything]. For a social experiment, to see how many people respond in a helpful way vs silly way (commenting is open - when the site isn't being hammered by HN's community) was one of the pieces of information I wanted to find out. The other is to show that no one sentence will ever work for all, and every sentence may be helpful to someone yet annoying to another. But the main reason 1Sentence was born: It is currently not easy to track down one sentence explanations of a topic without travelling the net hoping someone has written it. Sometimes all you need is one sentence to explain a product to another person or even yourself. So in that regard, it worked. I appreciate your feedback and thoughts, thank you! Diesel Laws
  - diesellaws 15y ago
    We have moved it to our Cloud VPS so it should now cope with the traffic. Thanks, Diesel.
fosk 15y ago
The best question is "In one sentence explain why this hit 1st page on HN" http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-why-this-hit-1st-page-on-hn/ http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-why-this-hit-1s...
zwieback 15y ago
I like it - a good destination for a few minutes of diversion and good to hone your technical writing skills. It would be useful to have different ways of scoring answers, separate buttons for "funny", "insightful" or "clear".
- diesellaws 15y ago
  Thanks zwieback! It's very limited in functionality currently, and it was built as a side project to http://barkles.com http://barkles.com - I won't be putting much time into 1Sentence, but that is a great suggestion - and if there is a way to implement it with Disqus comments I will surely consider it. Thanks!
eevilspock 15y ago
In one sentence explain how asinine 1sentence.com is. http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-how-asinine-this-website-is/ http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-how-asinine-thi... Added by yours truly.
- brokentone 15y ago
  Very nice. I think the website itself provided the best answer when I visited the page: http://cl.ly/8wTr http://cl.ly/8wTr (unedited: scout's honor, and you can tell by the pixels)
  - diesellaws 15y ago
    Lol, yes that is a funny sentence. however, some people have found it as a good tool to get useful explanations too. In regards to the database error, that's just because I was unprepared and did not expect 10,000+ hits in one night to a small server. We have since moved it to our VPS server, will see how that goes. Thanks for the feedback though :)

34 points by diesellaws 15y ago

1 Sentence is an experimental concept in simplified explanations. Would love to get your feedback.

diesellaws 15y ago

1 Sentence is an experimental concept in simplified explanations. Thanks for trying it out!

mcphilip 15y ago
Nice site! One suggestion, remove the "In one sentence explain" from the posts. My eyes get tired of seeing that over and over...
- diesellaws 15y ago
  Thanks mcphilip. Agreed. I will look into that. Thanks for the suggestion.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

corin_ 15y ago

Based on a very short look around I can't see this really being interesting att all. However, here's an idea I would like. The same website, fully moderated to the point that answers are not community-contributed, but sought out by website staff. For examplee, "In one sentence, explain what's great about SF for tech companies" you might reach out for an answer from pg, and a couple of other similar people. And doesn't have to be all tech, or even all well-known. For example one on there was "Explain why Justin Bieber is popular". The answer "because teenage girls exist" is entirely worthless, however perhaps there is someone in the music industry who could give an actual interesting thought, in one sentence, on that topic.

fredoliveira 15y ago
I like this idea, but I think you'd have a really hard time making money off of it. People won't be spending enough time on the site to extract enough value from their visit, and the moderators and contributors you talk about would need compensation for their work in making sure the content is spot on. The fact that this is intentionally microcontent-based makes this both interesting as well as VERY hard to monetize.
- corin_ 15y ago
  You're right, my comment was based more on a "I'd love to read this site" than "here's a good business plan". Who knows, maybe it would be possible to either extract enough revenue from it to at least compensate moderators, or perhaps just become an interesting enough place that clever people are willing to pitch in and help out for free.
- diesellaws 15y ago
  Another great point - monetization. It is not impossible to monetize this website via ad words etc, however for proper moderation you would definitely need real funding/cashflow. I didn't clarify this anywhere, however I would like to now: I never intended to make money off this website - at all. It is just a fun challenge and a problem I wanted to solve for myself: How can I find an explanation of something in only one sentence (currently, it's all over the internet and not in one central location). So 1Sentence was my quick attempt to fulfil this need.
diesellaws 15y ago
I appreciate your serious and well thought out feedback. I truly intended this to be a "meh, go for it" website while I focus on building my startup http://barkles.com http://barkles.com. It has definitely attracted the 'crazy' ones who post random and pointless info, but that is what I was aiming for. I can lock it down for login only, and do exactly what you suggest and it could actually become a great resource. However the full moderation that is needed will take me away from Barkles, which is not what was intended. Great to see that people are using it anyway, and having a lot of fun with it. Although, if you do have a look around you will see some great answers amongst the stupidity, which actually helps the people who posted that (everything links back to their websites). Again, thanks for the well thought out feedback, really appreciated. Diesel

hasenj 15y ago

I like the concept. Has the potential to be very addictive! Needs some moderation though, I see spams.

bennesvig 15y ago

Did this idea come from Reddit?

diesellaws 15y ago
No, I didn't use Reddit. It just came from my mind and want for a one sentence explanation to something.
jh3 15y ago
I was thinking the same thing. The first thing that popped into my head was r/explainlikeimfive.

rimantas 15y ago

Next move: 140characters. Sure, constrains are good and often lead to creativity but arbitrary constraints… I am not sure about.

diesellaws 15y ago
Thanks rimantas - we are working on a 200 character limit side by side debating platform - its currently in private Alpha testing and working well so far. http://barkles.com http://barkles.com

prof 15y ago

Is one sentance supposed to make it easier to understand? Because, for example the "explain programming"-answers made it more abstract and I guess people who does not know it would not understand it after "bla bla set of instructions bla bla". Making explanations smaller means higer abstractions which means it is often harder to understand. Edit: I do like small explanations. Like simple-wikipedia small.

diesellaws 15y ago
"Is one sentence supposed to make it easier to understand?" - To many = yes. In my eyes, this would be perfect to get an explanation of new trends (e.g. a year ago it may have been this: http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-social-media/ http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-social-media/) But overall it's an experiment, and I didn't think many would use it (Until I posted it here: Thanks HN community). So I will be seeing how it goes over the next few weeks, and see what the data suggests - but so far, I would say many love the simplicity of one sentence explanations. Cheers for your feedback!

hugh3 15y ago

The problem is that you don't get a good one-sentence explanation, you get a bunch of one-sentence explanations of widely different quality, frequently contradictory. I'm not sure this would help anyone understand anything. But to test it: I currently don't understand the Diffe-Helman Key Exchange, so I'm gonna read the explanations. [pause] Error establishing database connection. Well, so much for that experiment.

diesellaws 15y ago
In one sentence explain why the server is down: Error establishing database connection. (it worked! lol) But seriously though, thank you for your thoughts. I did not expect it to be such a hit on HN, and the website was thrown together in a couple of days. In response to this: "you get a bunch of one-sentence explanations of widely different quality, frequently contradictory." You are spot on. That is the world we live in - often widely different quality and frequently contradictory [in everything]. For a social experiment, to see how many people respond in a helpful way vs silly way (commenting is open - when the site isn't being hammered by HN's community) was one of the pieces of information I wanted to find out. The other is to show that no one sentence will ever work for all, and every sentence may be helpful to someone yet annoying to another. But the main reason 1Sentence was born: It is currently not easy to track down one sentence explanations of a topic without travelling the net hoping someone has written it. Sometimes all you need is one sentence to explain a product to another person or even yourself. So in that regard, it worked. I appreciate your feedback and thoughts, thank you! Diesel Laws
- diesellaws 15y ago
  We have moved it to our Cloud VPS so it should now cope with the traffic. Thanks, Diesel.

fosk 15y ago

The best question is "In one sentence explain why this hit 1st page on HN" http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-why-this-hit-1st-page-on-hn/ http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-why-this-hit-1s...

zwieback 15y ago

I like it - a good destination for a few minutes of diversion and good to hone your technical writing skills. It would be useful to have different ways of scoring answers, separate buttons for "funny", "insightful" or "clear".

diesellaws 15y ago
Thanks zwieback! It's very limited in functionality currently, and it was built as a side project to http://barkles.com http://barkles.com - I won't be putting much time into 1Sentence, but that is a great suggestion - and if there is a way to implement it with Disqus comments I will surely consider it. Thanks!

eevilspock 15y ago

In one sentence explain how asinine 1sentence.com is. http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-how-asinine-this-website-is/ http://1sentence.com/in-one-sentence-explain-how-asinine-thi... Added by yours truly.

brokentone 15y ago
Very nice. I think the website itself provided the best answer when I visited the page: http://cl.ly/8wTr http://cl.ly/8wTr (unedited: scout's honor, and you can tell by the pixels)
- diesellaws 15y ago
  Lol, yes that is a funny sentence. however, some people have found it as a good tool to get useful explanations too. In regards to the database error, that's just because I was unprepared and did not expect 10,000+ hits in one night to a small server. We have since moved it to our VPS server, will see how that goes. Thanks for the feedback though :)