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Reddit is estimated to be worth $20 million, and is now
so
influential that some of its contributors are inking big
movie
writer deals.
Unfortunately certain other creative discussion sites just
haven't taken off in the same way. Unlucky participants
who
backed the wrong horse need a
place to distract
themselves
with concepts that range from serious to ridiculous to
those
that deliberately hover in the grey zone (I might call
them
"ideas"), accompanied by comments ranging from the
side-
splitting to the monomaniacal (they could be called
"annotations").
/r/halfbakery
http://www.reddit.com/r/halfbakery
A subreddit dedicated to the dwindling halfbakery.com created by HighBeamHater - a community for 3 months [tatterdemalion, May 06 2012]
Halfbakers' Ball
The_20Annual_20Halfbakers_27_20Ball
[UnaBubba, May 11 2012]
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Annotation:
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Mirror, mirror on the wall... |
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Baked - though hardly widely known to exist. |
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[m-f-d] perpetual motion...oh no, wait... |
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Dwindling?! I've never dwindled in my life! |
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Yep, reddit is popular. It's success could be attributed to many things: clean interface, minimal owner moderation but heavy user moderation/involvement, content with a broad range of appeal, generally optimistic/enthusiastic users. |
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HB is a reasonable success, especially when compared with all the other invention/idea sharing websites. |
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Could HB be better in attracting users/content and increasing the signal to noise ratio? probably. Could it ever be as popular as reddit? nope; the narrow focus of this website will always limit its popularity. |
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//Could it ever be as popular as reddit? nope; the narrow focus
of this website will always limit its popularity.// |
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Also, I'm sort of skeptical about the scalability of the codebase.
No offense intended, Jutta—I'm sure your code is beautiful, but
I'd have serious doubts as to whether a CGI program written in
C is sufficiently thread-safe to handle a million-plus users and
tens of thousands of database transactions per second across
multiple servers. At the very least, it sounds like a
maintenance nightmare. |
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The code running HB could easily(?) be changed without users even noticing. |
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The problem with (several orders of magnitude) more users is the conversation threads would become impossible to follow. Reddit has executed it perfectly with conversation threads (i.e. making it clear who your comment is in response to) and user moderation (upvotes promote good comments to the top; downvotes to squash idiots and trolls). |
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//The code running HB could easily(?) be changed
without users even noticing.// |
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Maybe, but... I dunno... It just wouldn't be the
/same/. |
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It keeps coming up that the halfbakery has dulled from its once radiant splendor. What follows are some theories to explain the perception of this phenomena: |
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1) the number of users living on the site has decreased. |
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2) the halfbakery ideas database has reached a critical mass where it has become increasingly difficult to submit a new idea. |
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3) the halfbakery was an experiment in web 2.0 and the petri dish was never cleaned out. |
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4) some weird sociological thing happened. |
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5) the originator of reality's medication is working and voices are slowly disappearing. |
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6) 21_Quest caused people to leave. |
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7) Most of the prolific users was a single obsessed person who died. |
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8) jutta banned lots of random users in an equivalent action to poking her creation with a stick. |
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9) As the Internet develops as a spectacle users are watching more and typing less. |
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10) There's more interesting things to do online. |
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//There's more interesting things to do online// Link please or it is not true! |
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12) Facebook made everyone sick of being online. |
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//It keeps coming up that the halfbakery has dulled from its once radiant splendor//
Well quite. Every year that I've baked there has been a concern about the quality, quantity or on-going viability of the site. As far as I can tell, these worrying outbreaks of worry seem to coincide almost exactly with the occurrence of major sporting events in the year, particularly the Tour de France. I've never trusted the French, or the word 'boulangerie'...or geese......or that bloke with the binoculars who lives across the road. |
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Speaking as someone who has, technically, been a member of the site for years (albeit in extremely intermittent intervals spaced by several years) it does seem to me that these days the halfbakery is dominated by a few dedicated ideasters and commentators, with very few newcomers these days. I'm guessing that this is the cause of the percieved decline, as well as the drop in number of fresh ideas. |
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My guess as to the cause? Probably some people got bored and left, only a few die-hards stuck around, and with the site making no effort whatsoever to advertise itself and many of the die-hards wary of social media, new-comers have been arriving less and less. |
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Nevertheless, it'd be good to have some numbers- does [jutta] keep track of any relevant statistics? # of ideas and comments per day over time, # of new users over time, pageviews, something of that nature. |
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For minute there I thought you meant we should get
paid "over time". God that made me happy. A job, at
last. But on second read I understood. |
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//very few newcomers these days// |
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Just as well. I, for one, am getting tired of doing the
whole "gooble gobble" routine every time someone
new shows up. |
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Fine, we'll just be pricks to them instead. |
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Unabubba has that covered. |
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//no effort whatsoever to advertise itself |
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I've said it before and I'll say it again...this site needs
a real world book featuring the best (and worst) of
HB with relevant illustrations |
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Social media has probably soaked up a lot of the
demand for places like the HB. I know I spent time
an Multiply and Facebook before coming back
here. |
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However, there is a remarkably stable, small,
hardcore user group here... about 15 of the forty
or so regulars, from what I've seen in the last
month. There used to be about 130 regulars, of
whom maybe 20 or so were "hard core", from
memory. |
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I doubt that everything halfbaked has been
posted. With a couple of exceptions I've posted
nearly 60 novel ideas in a month, so it's pretty
much the way it's always been. |
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Of the really long term users from, say, 2000-2001,
you'll find [hippo], [blissmiss], [po], [DrBob] and
maybe a couple of others. |
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I miss [Uncle Nutsy], [StarChaser], [egnor],
[lewisgirl] and [Rods Tiger]... and [st3f].
[PeterSealy] came and went a few times. |
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To be honest, I cannot for the life of me imagine
why [jutta] is still supporting the place. It's an
example of unrewarded loyalty that is practically
unequalled in human history. Maybe she restricts
new memberships in the hope we'll all lose interest
or die of old age? |
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//Maybe she restricts new
memberships// |
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Nope, I don't think so. I had no problem becoming a member here, [jutta] responded to my email faster than most automated bots. |
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I've been idly keeping a list of active users (defined by me
as appearing at regular intervals over the past year or so),
new and old,
occasional and frequent, though it isn't numerated. I'd say
it's pushing 100, maybe over. The core seems to be around
20-30, in my book. |
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You're probably right, [Alter]. I'm not sure how many
I included in "The Annual Halfbakers' Ball" but it would
be <quick count> 37 and I've noticed that I missed a
few. |
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