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").
-- oscil8, May 06 2012

/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]

Mirror, mirror on the wall...
-- blissmiss, May 06 2012


Baked - though hardly widely known to exist.
-- Wrongfellow, May 06 2012


[m-f-d] perpetual motion...oh no, wait...
-- DrBob, May 06 2012


Dwindling?! I've never dwindled in my life!
-- ytk, May 06 2012


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.

HB is a reasonable success, especially when compared with all the other invention/idea sharing websites.

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.
-- xaviergisz, May 06 2012


//Could it ever be as popular as reddit? nope; the narrow focus of this website will always limit its popularity.//

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.
-- ytk, May 07 2012


The code running HB could easily(?) be changed without users even noticing.

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).
-- xaviergisz, May 07 2012


//The code running HB could easily(?) be changed without users even noticing.//

Maybe, but... I dunno... It just wouldn't be the /same/.
-- ytk, May 07 2012


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:

1) the number of users living on the site has decreased.

2) the halfbakery ideas database has reached a critical mass where it has become increasingly difficult to submit a new idea.

3) the halfbakery was an experiment in web 2.0 and the petri dish was never cleaned out.

4) some weird sociological thing happened.

5) the originator of reality's medication is working and voices are slowly disappearing.

6) 21_Quest caused people to leave.

7) Most of the prolific users was a single obsessed person who died.

8) jutta banned lots of random users in an equivalent action to poking her creation with a stick.

9) As the Internet develops as a spectacle users are watching more and typing less.

10) There's more interesting things to do online.
-- rcarty, May 07 2012


//There's more interesting things to do online// Link please or it is not true!
-- pocmloc, May 07 2012


11) everyone got jobs.
-- calum, May 07 2012


Bite your tongue, calum.
-- blissmiss, May 07 2012


12) Facebook made everyone sick of being online.
-- RayfordSteele, May 07 2012


//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.
-- DrBob, May 07 2012


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.

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.

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.
-- Hive_Mind, May 08 2012


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.
-- blissmiss, May 08 2012


//very few newcomers these days//

Just as well. I, for one, am getting tired of doing the whole "gooble gobble" routine every time someone new shows up.
-- ytk, May 08 2012


Fine, we'll just be pricks to them instead.
-- Alterother, May 08 2012


Unabubba has that covered.
-- rcarty, May 09 2012


//no effort whatsoever to advertise itself

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
-- simonj, May 09 2012


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.

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.

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.

Of the really long term users from, say, 2000-2001, you'll find [hippo], [blissmiss], [po], [DrBob] and maybe a couple of others.

I miss [Uncle Nutsy], [StarChaser], [egnor], [lewisgirl] and [Rods Tiger]... and [st3f]. [PeterSealy] came and went a few times.

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?
-- UnaBubba, May 10 2012


//Maybe she restricts new memberships//

Nope, I don't think so. I had no problem becoming a member here, [jutta] responded to my email faster than most automated bots.
-- erenjay, May 10 2012


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.
-- Alterother, May 10 2012


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.
-- UnaBubba, May 11 2012



random, halfbakery