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Fun to read, but tough to use

I love Indie Hackers. Before I joined, I've been following the Twitter account for a long time, and the content is great. Love the community. I think the site is 😍 too. But ever since I joined, it's been difficult to use the site for more than just reading.

  1. What's the points system? Something random I see on my profile, but no explanation I can find.
  2. Why don't any posts show up on the Posts tab in my Profile? I get the "Featured Posts", part, but I was expecting below that, to see a simple list of all my posts (not replies).
  3. The product/milestone thing is very confusing. Where do I see all my products/milestones? There probably should be a tab on my Profile that shows it, but no. Right now, the only way I can find my product is by going to /products and fiddling with the filters. That's just ridiculous.
  4. The first time I added a product, I was told it would be verified within 24 hours. Then I never heard anything again. Was expecting an email or notification, but nothing. Add that to the poor discoverability mentioned above, and I was confused.
  5. Still on products/milestones: after adding my milestone, I didn't see it anywhere. On the site homepage, I was seeing products added before and after mine show up. Waited for the verification time too. Started wondering if I had been blacklisted or something. Messaged the IndieHackers Twitter, but no response. Till today, I wonder if anyone has even seen my milestone. There needs to be better messaging on this.
  6. Spent an hour trying to post today, with no luck. No error message, just nothing. Eventually found out via Twitter that it's been like this for over six hours, and a hack was to log in and out again. So why wasn't there a banner on the site warning us of problems with posting until they can fix it?🤷‍♂️
  7. Somewhat unrelated, but why can't the digest be something other than daily? Weekly would be nice. I'd love to see news from IH on my inbox, just not everyday.

I'm sorry, I love this community. It's the best I've been on in a long time. But as a new user, it's been so frustrating for me doing anything beyond reading.

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    What's the points system? Something random I see on my profile, but no explanation I can find.

    Its not transparent (to avoid gaming the system), but its roughly based around the upvotes you get on your comments and posts. Here's a response from Courtland that I just found using the IH search for "points".

    Why don't any posts show up on the Posts tab in my Profile? I get the "Featured Posts", part, but I was expecting below that, to see a simple list of all my posts (not replies).

    Yea I think that tab should be called Featured Posts, not Posts. Your non-featured posts show up under the History tab (fyi @csallen)

    The product/milestone thing is very confusing. Where do I see all my products/milestones? There probably should be a tab on my Profile that shows it, but no.

    I can see you product on your profile (API Documentation for Developers). Clicking it shows me the milestones for that product.

    Still on products/milestones: after adding my milestone, I didn't see it anywhere... Till today, I wonder if anyone has even seen my milestone.

    Your milestone showed up under the Milestones tab you can find on the right side of the IH homepage. Here are all the milestones posted on that day

    Btw, if you happen to browse IH on iPhone, I created a mobile client called Moon you can try. Its faster and is native to mobile.

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      Thanks @levid!

      I get the desire to protect the points system from gaming, but if you're going to feature then prominently, on a profile then a little inline explanation of what they are would be nice.

      I can see you product on your profile (API Documentation for Developers). Clicking it shows me the milestones for that product.

      Hmm. I can't see my products on my profile. Maybe because I'm on mobile (Android).

      I can see my milestone in the link you shared now, but I can't say if it was there earlier. I saw a post about "timezone bias", and I suspect that may be it, because the date shows "August 27" on the product page, and "August 28" on the actual milestone. IIRC, I made the post pretty late at night (UTC+0100).

      Your app looks nice, but I'm on Android. 😅

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        Ah yea. The products don’t show on our profiles when on mobile. It’s a known bug. Small mobile related issues like that are one of the reasons I built the mobile app. But yea unfortunately it’s iOS only sorry! At least you know people can see your posts and stuff 👍

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