4 ms·

It's hard for me to fathom why people continue to pay for a service, whose founder time and time again shown that providing a good service is least of his prior

It's hard for me to fathom why people continue to pay for a service, whose founder time and time again shown that providing a good service is least of his priority. It took me four emails and two DMs just for him to acknowledge that there was a problem back in 2019. I understand virtue of simplicity, but how much can it hurt to just make the site responsive or just fix the fucking bookmarklet so it doesn't take multiple clicks to add a single bookmark? Archiving and full-text search are useful features, but they are so unreliable that it doesn't make sense to continue paying. Trust me, copy/pasting links in your notes app is a much saner alternative.

danparsonson 4y ago
I've always had good service in the past and the archiving feature has been genuinely useful over the years; I'm not sure what's happened in recent times. Luckily it's a good time to self-host.
4ad 4y ago
Because there's no alternative service to choose from.
- syncbehind 4y ago
  How do you figure? Raindrop.io is aggressively priced for all that it provides (I have switched from pinboard to this, and it is a near 1:1 replacement). In fact, it provides features such as highlighting / annotation that Pinboard.in will never implement. Wallabag, Linkding, and Archivebox are three selfhosted options that come to mind, that serve similar purposes.
  - 4ad 4y ago
    I opened up raindrop.io and I see a video, and what appears to be a bootstrap.js site. I cannot express how much these things sway me away from the service. I will never use a site like this, if I can help it. Also, apparently there's an app. Facepalm. The best part of pinboard is that there is none of this... stuff.
    - TehShrike 4y ago
      That "app" thing kept me from trying Raindrop for a long time, too. You can ignore it, it's just poor copy as far as I can tell. Once I finally got around to trying it, I found it to be a performant webapp. More performant than most. The home page really doesn't present it in a good light, but the actual service is good, you should give it a shot.
  - AlanYx 4y ago
    Highlighting is the killer feature in Raindrop for me -- it's such a quick way to help me remember why I bookmarked something.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
eli 4y ago
I don't think most people factor the founder into their buying decisions at all
- alex_sf 4y ago
  Maybe not, but it's definitely relevant if the founder is the only employee.
tptacek 4y ago
I'm happy to keep paying for it, since it does exactly what I need, and I knew going in that I wasn't paying for a customer support team to genuflect every time I had a question or concern. If it's not working at all for you, don't pay for it. What's baffling to me is how this manages to generate a whole thread of drama twice a year. It's a bookmarking service.
- tedunangst 4y ago
  Apparently a bunch of people used pinboard to bookmark the reorder form for their lifesaving medication, and now the site is down, and they're going to die. Or something equally dreadful, based on the reports of all the serious harm he's causing.
- Veen 4y ago
  It’s not just a bookmarking service. It’s also an archiving service. People are annoyed that the archiving part doesn’t work reliably.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    "It's an archiving service" doesn't make this drama any more interesting, and, again, it's weird that it keeps happening here. Just stop paying for it if it isn't working for you, and stop trying to use HN to take people own a peg.
    - rsto 4y ago
      I paid 5 years in advance after I had zero problems with pinboard for a couple of years. When archiving started to detoriate I contacted support and got ignored. Now I try to take my archive with me and again: it does not work and I get no reply. Maciej has for years marketed pinboard as the sane, stable alternative to VC-money chasing competitors and now for quite some time the service now does not deliver to promise. What you call "drama" most likely are frustrated users who believed in his story.
      - 4y ago

danparsonson 4y ago

I've always had good service in the past and the archiving feature has been genuinely useful over the years; I'm not sure what's happened in recent times. Luckily it's a good time to self-host.

4ad 4y ago

Because there's no alternative service to choose from.

syncbehind 4y ago
How do you figure? Raindrop.io is aggressively priced for all that it provides (I have switched from pinboard to this, and it is a near 1:1 replacement). In fact, it provides features such as highlighting / annotation that Pinboard.in will never implement. Wallabag, Linkding, and Archivebox are three selfhosted options that come to mind, that serve similar purposes.
- 4ad 4y ago
  I opened up raindrop.io and I see a video, and what appears to be a bootstrap.js site. I cannot express how much these things sway me away from the service. I will never use a site like this, if I can help it. Also, apparently there's an app. Facepalm. The best part of pinboard is that there is none of this... stuff.
  - TehShrike 4y ago
    That "app" thing kept me from trying Raindrop for a long time, too. You can ignore it, it's just poor copy as far as I can tell. Once I finally got around to trying it, I found it to be a performant webapp. More performant than most. The home page really doesn't present it in a good light, but the actual service is good, you should give it a shot.
- AlanYx 4y ago
  Highlighting is the killer feature in Raindrop for me -- it's such a quick way to help me remember why I bookmarked something.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

eli 4y ago

I don't think most people factor the founder into their buying decisions at all

alex_sf 4y ago
Maybe not, but it's definitely relevant if the founder is the only employee.

tptacek 4y ago

I'm happy to keep paying for it, since it does exactly what I need, and I knew going in that I wasn't paying for a customer support team to genuflect every time I had a question or concern. If it's not working at all for you, don't pay for it. What's baffling to me is how this manages to generate a whole thread of drama twice a year. It's a bookmarking service.

tedunangst 4y ago
Apparently a bunch of people used pinboard to bookmark the reorder form for their lifesaving medication, and now the site is down, and they're going to die. Or something equally dreadful, based on the reports of all the serious harm he's causing.
Veen 4y ago
It’s not just a bookmarking service. It’s also an archiving service. People are annoyed that the archiving part doesn’t work reliably.
- tptacek 4y ago
  "It's an archiving service" doesn't make this drama any more interesting, and, again, it's weird that it keeps happening here. Just stop paying for it if it isn't working for you, and stop trying to use HN to take people own a peg.
  - rsto 4y ago
    I paid 5 years in advance after I had zero problems with pinboard for a couple of years. When archiving started to detoriate I contacted support and got ignored. Now I try to take my archive with me and again: it does not work and I get no reply. Maciej has for years marketed pinboard as the sane, stable alternative to VC-money chasing competitors and now for quite some time the service now does not deliver to promise. What you call "drama" most likely are frustrated users who believed in his story.
    - 4y ago