[kwgardner]

Yeah, I think it is an unfair characterization, because it's extremely narrow and oversimplified. And yeah, we're learning today that maybe we do need to rethink our presentation, and especially the use of the word "positive" on our home page. (Fwiw, we've never used the wording "safe space" or tried to claim to be that--those were the author's words.)

I'm going to do a little bit of copy/pasting from some of my other comments on this thread to help respond to this one, so I hope you'll forgive me, but here's why I don't really agree with that description.

Why I think it's oversimplified and not really representative:

Our goal, and what we meant by using the word "positive" is that Imzy, and the communities on it, enrich people's lives in a positive way. That doesn't mean every comment, post, or discussion is positive. It means that I come away a better, more informed person from the discussions I have, or maybe I just enjoy my time there. Maybe we messed up using that word, and we'll need to change it. We're young, and we're learning how to describe and talk about who we are and what we're trying to do. What that does mean is that extreme or sustained harassment that makes people unhappy, fear for their lives, or feel like they can't participate isn't okay. Communities that exist solely for hate aren't cool. But disagreement and even voicing opinions that are very unfavorable can still exist. Saying mean things to people is okay, unless that's all you do all day following around a user or something. We all become better people when we can share our own perspectives and hear the perspectives of others, especially when they are different from our own. Otherwise you end up with an echo chamber.

Why I think it's extremely narrow and offbase:

This is the tiniest bit of what we're actually doing. We've focused on creating really diverse tools so that communities can exist and share however makes most sense for them and do the things that they need to do all in one place. We've built in a payments system. We've tried to give leaders AWESOME tools for making their communities exactly what they want and managing them the way that makes sense for them. We've tried to make things a lot more user and mobile friendly, as the places you referenced can be intimidating and not intuitive to a lot of people. Those are the things I'm most excited about--all the things we're adding to community functionality, not what we're taking away.

[tyingq]

>Yeah, I think it is an unfair characterization

Perhaps. However, many people here walked away with that impression...mostly from looking at your site.

I think it's highly likely this isn't just HN, and first impressions count. I would do a focus group or similar[1], and make sure your site is conveying the message you want.

[1] https://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/how

[kwgardner]

You're right. We're learning that we need to probably revisit some of how we present ourselves. To be fair, though, we did do some extensive user testing through several different methods. And interestingly, people generally always liked our site and us better, thought we were more trustworthy, and were more likely to try it when there were lots of friendly dinos and colors on the page than when it was a more traditional "professional" site. Of course, not everyone did, and the HN demographic probably falls into that not everyone, but we can't appeal to everyone no matter what we do, so we went with what made us happy and what our research said had the largest reach. There are still lots of areas for us to improve (this is the first people have really been seeing our site with no context, and the first press we have gotten, so we're learning), but that's why we went the way we did.

[snurk]

> healthy, positive communities

It sounds like therapy. it will attract people looking to be fixed.

[kwgardner]

We'll probably take the "positive" part out. But if people want to come here looking for help, that's totally fine! We already have some support groups started.

[kissickas]

How about playing up "creative"? From your own description here it sounds like that is what you're looking for, and from the author's description of your business model it sounds like that's the type of contributor you'd like to attract.

I haven't really looked into it as I'm not interested in joining at the invitation-only stage, but I really like some of the ideas you laid out on your home page! Good luck!

[kwgardner]

Thanks for the suggestion! That's a good one. The other word I'm thinking about is "limitless" to suggest the flexibility and the open developer platform.

Our business model will definitely have tipping and probably attract more creative people, but we'll slowly be adding more and more financial features to allow people to use money however they typically need to in a community structure, whether that's buying items, crowdfunding, paying for entry to an event, donating to people, putting rewards out for information, selling merchandise, and a whole bunch of other things. Hopefully as we do that, it'll start appealing to an even wider base as they'll be able to do all the things they want to on Imzy rather than using a combination of forums, Facebook, Slack, Paypal, Meetup, IndieGoGo, etc.

We'll probably leave invitation-only status and open things up a little later in the summer, but we want to make sure we establish a good tone for engagement and get our technology and features good enough before we do that.

[snurk]

That's cool; maybe it'll be a niche area for you.