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It will take 2 years to develop this bitch? My bet: It will flop. Systems that take long to complete usually flop. Reminds me of Diaspora. The things that take

by itry 12y ago

It will take 2 years to develop this bitch? My bet: It will flop. Systems that take long to complete usually flop. Reminds me of Diaspora. The things that take off are usually created in a short time. Hacker News, Git... How long did the first version of Facebook take? Wikipedia says "Zuckerberg wrote a program called Facemash on October 28, 2003". Does that mean it was coded in one day? Since it was a hot-or-not type site, that could very well be. About the second version - then called "Facebook" - Wikipedia says it took less then a month to code. My most successful project ever took me one day before I launched it. My second most successful one weekend. Then years of development went into these. But only after I saw people use the core functionality.

Crito 12y ago
While completed projects almost always take longer (git is still under active development, Facebook obviously is still paying developers to come in every week, etc), it is probably a sign of good project planning to be able to get a functional prototype out the door in under a week. It's the difference between a project with realistic and obtainable goals and milestones, and a project with a pie-in-the-sky grand vision but no idea how to get there.
- tormeh 12y ago
  Well, some things are just hard, take time and can't be divided into vertical slices. That's usually not the case with web technologies, if my impression is correct, but it certainly is the case in many other disciplines.
  - Crito 12y ago
    Sure. There are certainly some things which don't lend themselves to regular achievable goals. If you were tasked with building a bridge, you'd probably be hard pressed to put out anything within the first few days, let alone a prototype. That can happen in software too, but I suspect that situations where that is the case are in the minority. This isn't fighter jet avionics, it's a glorified discussion board.
    - userbinator 12y ago
      it's a glorified discussion board. Exactly. As someone who has written one in the span of a few hours, it's hard for me to be impressed by this and all the other attempts to reinvent discussion boards over the years - they all seem to lack some very basic functionality that mainstream forum software has had for years and turn out to be overengineered solution-looking-for-a-problem type things.
    - tormeh 12y ago
      I guess the real problem here is that the NYT and the WP wants it to be perfect when it's out on their website. They don't want iteration. If my hunch is correct they'll also use some kind of machine learning to filter out bad comments.
      - philosophus 12y ago
        Should be interesting to see how they define "bad."
grayclhn 12y ago
> Then years of development went into these. But only after I saw people use the core functionality. The WP and NYTimes allow comments on articles already, so there's been plenty of time to see people use the "core functionality" of a comment system. Since I assume that you knew this already, it's hard to see what your point is.
- grey-area 12y ago
  I think his point is that large ambitious projects tend to fail by their very nature. The budgets are huge, the stakeholders are legion, and no-one can agree what they really want, because they all want entirely different things (most of which are orthogonal to the project at hand and to do with careers, ego, and corporate politics). It's very hard to make a project with a long timeline and a large budget come in on time, let alone one which involves three massive bureaucracies and management chains, even if the functionality to be delivered is simple.
droopyEyelids 12y ago
I agree. This really seems like a product you'd want to get out there fast and fail a few times with. As far as I can see, there isn't even a clear Best Way to handle online community they could build towards. Just like every voting system has side effects and weird incentives, any system that chooses what opinions and information reach people will, too. At the very least, I hope to see a public discussion of the different designs they've shopped to the news orgs, and the side effects they anticipate. That way the project can at least be judged on whether it satisfies the goals the organization decides to pursue, because a perfect online comment publication system seems like an impossible goal.
- knowtheory 12y ago
  Why exactly do you or OP assume that this project can't or won't iterate and test? And why are you assuming anything about the existence of voting systems? Dan Sinker even says in his piece "We don’t see this project as a single product, but instead as building blocks for engaging communities throughout the web."
  - itry 12y ago
    You might be right, that it will go live earlier. And that the 2 year period is just the period that funding is available for. I interpreted tfa as it will go live in 2 years.
danso 12y ago
From Dan Sinker, of Knight-Mozilla OpenNews: http://dansinker.com/post/89256288060/opennews-building-new-communities-with-the-new-york http://dansinker.com/post/89256288060/opennews-building-new-... > Finally, this is a project that has the opportunity not only to improve community engagement in journalism, but to strengthen the web itself. Technologies like Backbone.js, D3, and Django have all been forged and tested in the demanding environment of the newsroom, and then gone on to transform the way people build on the web. We don’t know that there’s a Backbone lurking inside this project, but we’re sure as hell going to find out. The most successful from-journalism projects don't seem to be "projects", per se, but libraries built to "scratch" a major itch: Backbone (and UnderscoreJS) were abstracted from the front-end patterns of the DocumentCloud project (http://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2010/10/code-drop-backbone-js/ http://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2010/10/code-drop-backbon...)...Django was created after developers at the Lawrence, KS newspaper got tired of building structured-data apps from scratch (http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter01.html#django-s-history http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter01.html#django-s-his...)... IMO, these libraries succeeded because they grew organically and iteratively, from the needs of closely-knit developers (or sole developer). Moreover, they are agnostic...Django is not just a MVC framework suited for the news, but suited for all kinds of data applications. Similarly, D3js doesn't care if the data visualization is for a news story or some business app. It's a different scenario to create something big...in this case, basically a social network for media company users...and to create it for the news business. I'm not sure that having big dreams and a news-focused mission is necessarily a harbinger of success.
dreamweapon 12y ago
My bet: It will flop. Systems that take long to complete usually flop. Reminds me of Diaspora. .. Or of the... Mozilla re-write? Which took even longer than 2 years to stabilize, didn't it?
mcgwiz 12y ago
> The things that take off are usually created in a short time. Fair enough, but that's totally anecdotal. A helluva a lot (<-- carefully imprecise) of systems created in a short amount of time also flop. Is a short amount of a time a cause of success? And who's to say they won't have an early access program to help build-measure-learn? I do think the notion of putting such a long timeframe around a tech project is naive, but it could be done as a matter of any number of non-tech reasons (setting public/shareholder expectations of two separate companies first/foremost, as well as ensuring resourcing from three orgs).
nkozyra 12y ago
I think the better argument here is not about speed to market but about an iterative process that allows real-world testing. Two years with a product generating bugs & feedback is probably a lot better than two years developing something that's tested only internally. The time isn't really the designation, though.
alecdbrooks 12y ago
Releasing early and iterating works really well, but it's hardly the only way. Rich Hickey spent two and half years on Clojure before there was a public release[0]. Comment systems are much older today than social networks were in 2003, so I think it might make more sense to step back and plan rather than try a bunch of ideas. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clojure#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clojure#History

by itry 12y ago

Crito 12y ago

While completed projects almost always take longer (git is still under active development, Facebook obviously is still paying developers to come in every week, etc), it is probably a sign of good project planning to be able to get a functional prototype out the door in under a week. It's the difference between a project with realistic and obtainable goals and milestones, and a project with a pie-in-the-sky grand vision but no idea how to get there.

tormeh 12y ago
Well, some things are just hard, take time and can't be divided into vertical slices. That's usually not the case with web technologies, if my impression is correct, but it certainly is the case in many other disciplines.
- Crito 12y ago
  Sure. There are certainly some things which don't lend themselves to regular achievable goals. If you were tasked with building a bridge, you'd probably be hard pressed to put out anything within the first few days, let alone a prototype. That can happen in software too, but I suspect that situations where that is the case are in the minority. This isn't fighter jet avionics, it's a glorified discussion board.
  - userbinator 12y ago
    it's a glorified discussion board. Exactly. As someone who has written one in the span of a few hours, it's hard for me to be impressed by this and all the other attempts to reinvent discussion boards over the years - they all seem to lack some very basic functionality that mainstream forum software has had for years and turn out to be overengineered solution-looking-for-a-problem type things.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    I guess the real problem here is that the NYT and the WP wants it to be perfect when it's out on their website. They don't want iteration. If my hunch is correct they'll also use some kind of machine learning to filter out bad comments.
    - philosophus 12y ago
      Should be interesting to see how they define "bad."

grayclhn 12y ago

> Then years of development went into these. But only after I saw people use the core functionality. The WP and NYTimes allow comments on articles already, so there's been plenty of time to see people use the "core functionality" of a comment system. Since I assume that you knew this already, it's hard to see what your point is.

grey-area 12y ago
I think his point is that large ambitious projects tend to fail by their very nature. The budgets are huge, the stakeholders are legion, and no-one can agree what they really want, because they all want entirely different things (most of which are orthogonal to the project at hand and to do with careers, ego, and corporate politics). It's very hard to make a project with a long timeline and a large budget come in on time, let alone one which involves three massive bureaucracies and management chains, even if the functionality to be delivered is simple.

droopyEyelids 12y ago

I agree. This really seems like a product you'd want to get out there fast and fail a few times with. As far as I can see, there isn't even a clear Best Way to handle online community they could build towards. Just like every voting system has side effects and weird incentives, any system that chooses what opinions and information reach people will, too. At the very least, I hope to see a public discussion of the different designs they've shopped to the news orgs, and the side effects they anticipate. That way the project can at least be judged on whether it satisfies the goals the organization decides to pursue, because a perfect online comment publication system seems like an impossible goal.

knowtheory 12y ago
Why exactly do you or OP assume that this project can't or won't iterate and test? And why are you assuming anything about the existence of voting systems? Dan Sinker even says in his piece "We don’t see this project as a single product, but instead as building blocks for engaging communities throughout the web."
- itry 12y ago
  You might be right, that it will go live earlier. And that the 2 year period is just the period that funding is available for. I interpreted tfa as it will go live in 2 years.

danso 12y ago

From Dan Sinker, of Knight-Mozilla OpenNews: http://dansinker.com/post/89256288060/opennews-building-new-communities-with-the-new-york http://dansinker.com/post/89256288060/opennews-building-new-... > Finally, this is a project that has the opportunity not only to improve community engagement in journalism, but to strengthen the web itself. Technologies like Backbone.js, D3, and Django have all been forged and tested in the demanding environment of the newsroom, and then gone on to transform the way people build on the web. We don’t know that there’s a Backbone lurking inside this project, but we’re sure as hell going to find out. The most successful from-journalism projects don't seem to be "projects", per se, but libraries built to "scratch" a major itch: Backbone (and UnderscoreJS) were abstracted from the front-end patterns of the DocumentCloud project (http://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2010/10/code-drop-backbone-js/ http://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2010/10/code-drop-backbon...)...Django was created after developers at the Lawrence, KS newspaper got tired of building structured-data apps from scratch (http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter01.html#django-s-history http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter01.html#django-s-his...)... IMO, these libraries succeeded because they grew organically and iteratively, from the needs of closely-knit developers (or sole developer). Moreover, they are agnostic...Django is not just a MVC framework suited for the news, but suited for all kinds of data applications. Similarly, D3js doesn't care if the data visualization is for a news story or some business app. It's a different scenario to create something big...in this case, basically a social network for media company users...and to create it for the news business. I'm not sure that having big dreams and a news-focused mission is necessarily a harbinger of success.

dreamweapon 12y ago

My bet: It will flop. Systems that take long to complete usually flop. Reminds me of Diaspora. .. Or of the... Mozilla re-write? Which took even longer than 2 years to stabilize, didn't it?

mcgwiz 12y ago

> The things that take off are usually created in a short time. Fair enough, but that's totally anecdotal. A helluva a lot (<-- carefully imprecise) of systems created in a short amount of time also flop. Is a short amount of a time a cause of success? And who's to say they won't have an early access program to help build-measure-learn? I do think the notion of putting such a long timeframe around a tech project is naive, but it could be done as a matter of any number of non-tech reasons (setting public/shareholder expectations of two separate companies first/foremost, as well as ensuring resourcing from three orgs).

nkozyra 12y ago

I think the better argument here is not about speed to market but about an iterative process that allows real-world testing. Two years with a product generating bugs & feedback is probably a lot better than two years developing something that's tested only internally. The time isn't really the designation, though.

alecdbrooks 12y ago

Releasing early and iterating works really well, but it's hardly the only way. Rich Hickey spent two and half years on Clojure before there was a public release[0]. Comment systems are much older today than social networks were in 2003, so I think it might make more sense to step back and plan rather than try a bunch of ideas. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clojure#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clojure#History