[niko001]

Agreed. I can fully understand Courtland's motivation to grow a community (to keep people coming back more frequently / to create engagement) and the best way to do this is putting the forum front and center, but at the moment, the community is much too immature to be valuable. Lots of people asking for feedback (often with zero replies), self-promotional articles disguised as advice from first-time side-project creators, and even if there happens to be a lively discussion once in a while, it often feels like 'the blind leading the blind'. The value (for me, at least) of IH was the amazing interviews and podcasts - Courtland consistently pushed out great content that was a joy to read/listen to. Sure, these are still available and I still visit the site at least once a week to check for new podcast episodes, but I stopped reading interviews because they're so hard to get to and it takes 3+ clicks to see which ones are new.

[louisswiss]

> I can fully understand Courtland's motivation to grow a community (to keep people coming back more frequently / to create engagement)

I don't think that's why Courtland is growing a community. I think he is growing the community because he believe's it is the best way he can help indie founders be more successful right now.

Also, please stop spreading untruths. It takes one click to get from the homepage to a list of all interviews ranked in descending chronological order. With some pretty awesome filters as well.

FWIW, if you're reading this comment and were thinking about checking out Indie Hackers then don't let these comments put you off. There is a pretty large group of us on Indie Hackers who have built (and are building) successful software businesses, the average quality of discussions and answers is higher than on HN (albeit more focussed on the topic of bootstrapping and with a narrower quality range), and it is honestly the most positive, supportive community I've ever found online.

[niko001]

> Also, please stop spreading untruths. It takes one click to get from the homepage to a list of all interviews ranked in descending chronological order. With some pretty awesome filters as well.

Not true. On mobile, it takes exactly three clicks, as I stated. On desktop, it takes two clicks. What you're probably referring to, the "browse hundreds" link on the homepage (desktop only), is a list of products, which are different from interviews. Please stop spreading untruths (and being so theatrical in the process).

I never discouraged anyone from visiting IH, I just stated the for me personally, the old focus was more valuable.

> the average quality of discussions and answers is higher than on HN

That's just not true. Probably 30% of threads receive 0-1 replies, there's a lot of blogspam, and the community is very homogenous. There's nothing wrong with trying to grow a community, and I love what Courtland is doing in general, I just liked the "old" IH better.

[louisswiss]

> Not true. On mobile, it takes exactly three clicks, as I stated. On desktop, it takes two clicks.

Ok, just in case you're genuinely mistaken and not trolling, I'll bite. It takes one click on both mobile (iOS at least) and desktop to get to the newest interviews (https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1). The link is in the footer (titled "interviews").

> That's just not true. Probably 30% of threads receive 0-1 replies, there's a lot of blogspam, and the community is very homogenous.

Again, I can almost understand why you'd think that if you didn't spend much time on HN or IH.

IH is definitely smaller and more homogenous than HN (in terms of interests but probably not backgrounds). So if you're the kind of person who spends their time on the 'front page' of HN and IH, it's conceivable you'd get the wrong impression.

But you'd be missing out on the bigger picture - check out the difference between the 'new posts' tabs on HN and IH... Maybe 10% of new HN posts are ever commented on or receive more than 2-3 upvotes. For Indie Hackers it's easily 50 or 60%.

> I just liked the "old" IH better.

That's fair.

[BartBoch]

> The link is in the footer (titled "interviews").

Footer link is not user-friendly imo. Navbar/sidebar are is where it should be. Probably 95% of users won't even know that there is a link to interviews in the footer.

[csallen]

Got a few questions for you:

1. Why not bookmark the interviews page instead of the homepage?

2. Would it be helpful to you if the interviews/podcasts were more prominently linked from the homepage, or is it only sufficient if they are the primary focus of the homepage?

3. If you don't mind sharing, what do you do? Specifically, I'm curious about whether or not you're a founder, what stage you're at, and what you hope to gain from a site like Indie Hackers.

[BartBoch]

1. Why force people to bookmark it, instead of adding a navbar link?

[csallen]

I do plan on adding a navbar link. However, I don't think this eliminates the advantages of bookmarking or directly visiting the desired URL for someone who finds no value in the homepage. (For example, I never visit Reddit's homepage.)