I dislike the new IndieHackers.
I dislike the new IndieHackers. There is so much going on that the design actively pushes me away from the site. The new layout is terrible, and has a social networky feel to it. These title-less posts are horrible and I hate the new card like UI (I know I can change it). The activity (comments) in the community seems to have dropped off a cliff or something. Why do you think this is?
I can't remember the last time I read an interview here. Same with the podcast, except the daniel gross one. A lot of the old timers have gone silent. There's a lot of low quality content here including this post.
Seems like the site is losing direction and purpose. Any suggestions for courtland and channing to make the site useful again?
Though a little harsh, this is my honest criticism. Please don't delete this post mods, let's have an honest criticism thread, since no one ever seems to criticize around here.
I just wanted to say that I second this.
Founders; you have a really good thing going here. But there are some big pitfalls; I have seen many entrepreneurship related sites being buried in spam and short term thinking.
On a more concrete level. The new revision has a number of obvious technical bugs and usability problems with no clear improvements. It seems to be put into production too early.
Rereading this comment I realize that what I wrote was way too grumpy.
I noticed a bug when posted here again after being absent for a while: You cannot make an empty post but you can make a post consisting of a few spaces " " and deleting that causes an internal error.
Obviously no biggie.
Wrt. usability it is very easy to be a grumpy old man and I don't want to be that. I appreciate people trying move user interface design forward. But there is a reason that some of the most popular internet forums (reddit and hacker news) look like they were designed 20 years ago. That reason is that it works.
Wrt. spam (and shameless self promotion): I think that is the biggest danger. I think you should consider making it harder for users to promote their own thing. Just like it is considerably harder to get a post on the front page of Hacker News in the category "Show HN" than with a standard post.
Thanks for the feedback, nothing wrong with being critical. There have actually been quite a few discussions about this. To respond to a few of your points:
Perhaps it looks worse, but commenting has stayed the same. We're no longer sticking the most popular threads to the top of the homepage, and therefore comments are more spread out. Moving away from a winner-take-all model is a desirable change imo, because it means a higher percentage of people are having their posts read and responded to. The appearance of there being fewer comments is a downside for sure, but that won't last forever as the community grows.
The social networky feel comes down to design preferences, which is one reason I kept the list view. The design is still evolving. Right now I think posts highlight the author too much. Also, going title-less is just an experiment. I'll likely go back to titles, but with some changes. It's been informative to see how people write posts differently without titles.
There's always been a lot of low-quality content unfortunately. In the past it would often hit the homepage, but today that's impossible. However, the new design motivates more people to check the "newest" feed where before get never did. I think that's a good thing, but it does make the need to introduce additional moderation or rules more pressing.
It's unfortunate you never check the interviews or podcast anymore. Why is that? I suppose that, without the winner-take-all algorithm, they don't stick around on top of the homepage for quite as long. That's something for me to watch as well.
TL;DR - The new changes have introduced both intended and unintended consequences. Some of the good results aren't obvious, but are nevertheless good. I'm working to keep the good stuff and improve the bad stuff, so over time things will trend in the right direction.