The site seems to have moved from something intriguing and (occasionally) edgy into a boring Q&A site. I like the AMA idea, but it seems to have turned into another Reddit. No real reason for the “anonymous” part anymore, be it authors or posters.
16 answers from the community
<p>Moderator Dana here.</p>
<p>This was sent to me via anonymous feedback, but I thought it was worthy of a bigger discussion.</p>
<p>We're very much still in the experimental phase of growth. Our AMA's are a work in progress. We first tried by making our guest visible, which seemed to tame the answers. Our goal is to create honest dialog, so our second experiment (currently) was to disguise our guest. This has definitely improved the answers, but it seems the questions have been relatively tame.</p>
<p>We've allowed the site to evolve as naturally as possible. It appears that Q&A seems to be the most desired by the community. Frankly, I was hoping it would go the way of stories, but it hasn't played out that way.</p>
<p>In terms of questions, I do agree with the OP that many are mild enough that they wouldn't require anonymity. However, I have to remind myself that sometimes the OP's ask rudimentary questions they feel they should already know the answer to, thus wanting to protect their identify for fear of embarrassment, ridicule, etc.</p>
<p>While, like the OP, I enjoy intriguing and controversial dialog, I don't want to manufacture it within the site unnaturally. We're 100% reliant on the needs of the community, which means that somedays the discussion will be relatively stale.</p>
<p>We use anonymity to create a sense of security to extract open, troll free, discussion. If anyone ever has any opinions or suggestions on how to improve on that mission, you have our complete attention.</p>
As a resident troll (and sometimes good poster), an honest piece of critique is please fix your sidebar - it's a hot mess.
<p>Haha. Alright, fair enough. To be honest, I'm not happy with the entire design/layout. But, you're right, we do keep adding to the sidebar which has made it into a disaster.</p>
Another critique is to speed up the load time. My iPhone 5 chokes whenever it loads the main page enough that sometimes I think twice about checking this site.
Also did you see a huge bump in signups when you implement the auto-popup? Its annoying as hell but I heard it works.
make the AMA unofficial -- invite your guests to join the natural conversation but get some kind of badge or identifier so that we know they're special guests
Please keep the anonymity. My startup (I guess it's a small business now) is something that is working for us, but I don't think it would be all that well-received by some people in the top 10% of the economy. We don't need trolls or people telling us why our business rocks or sucks, we go through the same growth gyrations as the next small business. Keeping it anonymous helps us avoid all the unnecessary commentary.
yeah i really hate the stupid AMA feature too ... i liked it before with just people posting
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<p>More specifically, what is it about the AMA that you don't like?</p>
again and again, we like hearing from entrepreneurs. i think the AMA could have been interesting, for instance, if this current one dished some juicy stories from either as a founder or at YC. not just as controversy but keeping it real
Definitely. The AMAs are dominating the site now. I don't even bother clicking on them. I came to this site for the user generated content(from entrepreneurs); not something that a VC or angel investor wrote.
+1
I agree. The front page is flooded with AMA's and it's gotten tedious, quickly.
I think that advice from anyone about the startup life is over rated. I asked a very successful entrepreneur for advice once and realized how well intentioned yet irrelevent his advice was for my pursuits.
True. This is why you can't really teach entrepreneurship. Each situation is different. This is why I like reading stories from founders and discussing certain topics with them like sexual harassment rather than reading a boring Q&A site where a VC or angel investor answers questions.
Yeah. Let's keep it real.