HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I have a feeling we have not gotten the hostile "You'll get over it"[1] redesign from scratch because 1. HN doesn't have a team of UX experts desperately pleading to try out all their design experiments, 2. HN doesn't have a team of webdevs who want to re-factor everything into using the next framework-of-the-month, and 3. HN doesn't chase all these vanity metrics like engagement and time-on-site because it's a side-project of Ycombinator not their main business.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI

Yea, I left Slashdot after The Great Redesign, and other websites too for similar reasons. It seems to be this inevitable milestone in any website's (or, generally, software's) life:

- V1: Focused, works, fast, lacks some features, but good enough to grow

- V1.1: More features, still performs well, exponential community growth

- V1.2: Adds chat, messages, social, loses focus, performance starts to suffer, linear or slowing growth

- V1.3: Start loading up with ads, things are getting worse, usage plateaus or teeters

[EMERGENCY! HIRE THE DESIGNERS!]

- V2.0: Huge, unnecessary re-design [1] without community input. Most features gone. More ads. Community craters. This is the Fark.com "You'll get over it" phase.

- V2.1: Saturated with ads, founders have moved on, site is on autopilot, a shell of what it used to be.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI

> they're about to Digg themselves into a amusingly-recursive grave

"You'll get over it"

> All it would take is one great, open forum site to absorb the refugees from a terrible management mistep

This is fundamental risk to any business that depends on a social space. The best explanation of the mechanics that create this risk is Joe Peacock's talk[1] at NOTACON 8 about the time fark.com made the same mistake... and then poured gasoline on the fire with the infamous "You'll get over it" comment being the only publicly visible response by fark.com's management.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI

⬐ doubleunplussed

As I recall, people got over it.

⬐ pdkl95

Most people got over it, but it's hard to estimate if people actually "got over it". Looking at the behavior of the people using the site afterwords probably doesn't include[1] the people that left. In Q&A at the end of the talk they mention that the incident caused a significant drop in paid-account revenue[2]. They eventually recovered, but the exodus was real for a while.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

[2] They also mentioned that some of the loudest people that left came back later under a different username. That's the lesson the talk is trying to explain: most people probably do like (or will eventually like) the benefits of the "new and improved" version, so involve them in the process and respect that they might just need some time to adapt. Forcing people to adapt immediately only associates the new version with a strongly negative experience.

> Does Snapchat not have any user feedback

This is the most important lesson for any service that depends on a community of users for survival: involve them in the update process, or you will scare them away. Even if the new version is objectively better (which is rare), unexpected changes cause confusion and anger.

I encourage anybody involved in making this kind of service to watch this[1] talk from NOTACON by Joe Peacock of fark.com about their experience deploying a surprise redesign, then compounding the anger with their infamous reply:

> You'll get over it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI

Shocking you community's members with a sudden change - no matter the size - is almost always seen as hostile and drives members away.

I recommend the talk[1] Joe Peacock of fark.com gave about the time they deployed a redesign unannounced and made their infamous "You'll get over it." post in the thread full of confused and angry members.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI

⬐ gozur88

>Shocking you community's members with a sudden change - no matter the size - is almost always seen as hostile and drives members away.

But the size of the change matters. No matter how much warning they gave there's no way I would tolerate a flat $0.35 fee plus a percentage on a dollar donation.

You should watch the talk[1] by Joe Peacock of fark.com about updating the site (the infamous "You'll get over it" incident).

The solution isn't "change nothing". Instead, you involve the people that use the old (current) version in the process, keep them informed, and get some kind of buy-in. Most importantly, you respect that the user has their own schedule and needs with a migration path that allows the user to make the transition at their own pace.

What you don't do is surprise users at random times, revoke any agency they had, and force changes on them without any consideration fo the user's situation.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI

The world needs the internet; the specific software running at the endpoints isn't particularly important. Twitter was used because... it was already used by the people involved.

The benefit of any place or tool for social activities is only tangentially related to the benefits provided by that place or tool. The value is the people that are using it, who can (and do) move all the time.

Anybody interested in the relationship between a service like twitter and the people that create it's value by using it may be interested in the talk[1] given by an admin o fark.com a few years ago, where they discuss how they almost destroyed their community ("you'll get over it") from a failure to remember why people came to their site.

If there is one lesson that Twitter or any other social media business needs to learn, it's the one discussed in talk: involve the people that use your service at least somewhat in the changes you make to the service, and absolutely don't surprise them with sudden change, or they will find some other place to hang out.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI (language warning, if that matters (it's veyr mild))

⬐ the__prestige

> The world needs the internet; the specific software running at the endpoints isn't particularly important. Twitter was used because... it was already used by the people involved.

Hmm, the world needs networked communication; the specific protocol running at the endpoints isn't particularly important. TCP/IP was used because... it was already used by the people involved.

Further, the world needs easy communication; the specific mechanism to communicate isn't particularly important. Networking was used because... it was already used by the people involved.

"You'll get over it"

Many HN readers should recognize that as the words a certain admin of fark.com.

For those that don't recognize it, the short version of the story was the admins had developed a new front-end to Fark, but they didn't make a general announcement an update was going to happen. The just deployed it one morning... and left for a convention. When the change was discovered a little while later... well... lets just say it was not a popular change[1]. More importantly, nobody know what was going on, making emotions run even higher due to the lack of communication from the admins.

So after being left to stew for 4+ hours - and over 10k posts from confused and angry users - an admin does the absolutly worst thing possible, and made a single post with those four words: "You'll get over it". There were three main reactions to this. Many of us closed the browser and went back to work or otherwise avoided the drama. Maybe 10-15% of users spent the next day flaming the admins at about 10k posts/hour. Finally, about 1/3 close their accounts and left, permanently.

I suspect reddit is in the middle of a similar situation right now.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that the Fark story doesn't really end there. Years later, Fark admin Joe Peacock gave one of the more important talks[3] (at NOTACON 8) I've ever seen, about what exactly went wrong, and the bad decisions that made a catastrophe inevitable. Joe discusses what may be the most important lesson for anyone managing a place where users choose to spend their free time: if you don't involve your user in the decisions and changes that affect them, they wil simply find another place to hang out.

[1] which some of us still[2] partially-revert: https://userstyles.org/styles/60176/fark-theme-un-v3-0-relea...

[2] when I remember; apparently haven't posted last year's fixes sigh

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI (in typical fark style, a few of the talk's slides may be borderline NSFW)

TL;DR - just watch [3], where a fark.com admin gives some *very good advice on how to interact with your users.

⬐ HappyTypist

This is a great talk for anyone managing communities. Reddit's current situation does bear many resemblances, especially with kn0thing's "Thank you for the feedback. I hope you change your mind about reddit, but if not, you're entitled to your opinion." response.

⬐ simonswords82

That statement from kn0thing made me think "pride does indeed come before a fall". Let's see!

⬐ zzleeper

Amazing story! Also thanks for the video, I can't believe it has only 1000 views..

⬐ caminante

I remember the Fark 2.0 backlash for Jeff's comment.

Yesterday, Ohanian appears to have made a similar comment, beginning to snowball in infamy:

  Ohanian: "Popcorn tastes good."[1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riam...

Sure there is - you provide the service that customers signed up for. To most people that would be showing them all the results they expect. The research at Facebook selectively left some things out, which is clearly not what the customer signed up for.

Even better, the entire issue can be avoided by placing the decision in the customer's hands. Let them decide what kind of results they want. You can provide all the tools you want when it is the customer that is voluntarily choosing to use them. You might even learn something interesting from that choice, too.

/* now, to the thread in general, and not specifically the above comment /

What so many here seem to be missing is that this is about respecting the customer and not trying to go behind their back. They chose to use a service for some reason(s), and suddenly changing that without notifying them or asking for their input* is at a minimum highly unethical (and plain rude). As this article points out, sometime it is also illegal. Depending on the laws, contracts, and/or monetary transactions involved (if any) this kind of unilateral modification to the relationship may conflict with contract law or various business laws as well.

As some may people seem to have not read the article, a key quote:

"The central pillar of modern research ethics is that in most cases researchers don’t get to decide for themselves whether an experiment is worth it. Unless the risks are minimal or nonexistent, that decision belongs to the participants, not to the researchers. That’s what the Common Rule does: it systematically takes these decisions out of researchers’ hands, and gives them to participants and IRBs."

Yes, whenever humans are involved, the decision to modify ("experiment") on humans in any way cannot be made by the experimenters. Which bring me to the thing that I find most damning about this whole situation: the Facebook[1] and OkCupid experiments was fairly trivial. In in my not-an-IRB opinion, there is little risk to any of the participants; it's trivial compared to experiments like drug trials or other medical research. If they asked an IRB first, they could have gotten their approval quite easily. If, due to the specifics of the experiment, proper Informed Consent would have made the experiment useless, the IRB could have easily waived some of those requirements.

So no, various testing is not "illegal". You can try new things and see how it affects your customers. We have simply decided as a society (and try and ensure with various federal and state laws) that if it involves humans, you need a neutral 3rd party to make that decision. Yes, this slows[2] you down a bit, but again approval for an experiment like those done by Facebook and OkCupid should be fast and easy. Be glad you're not doing medical research with nasty risk.

Traditionally, if there is a question as to if approval is needed you should assume you do need it. If you are going behind the customers back to change something from the expectations[3] they initially signed up for without their approval, you absolutely need IRB approval.

[1] As I understand it, it may be Cornell that was the initially at fault for not getting IRB approval, so they deserve some of the blame in that case. Regardless, as the researchers Facebook has a duty (and sometimes, a legal requirement) to make sure that approval was done properly before they proceeded with the experiment. As an analogy, consider that before you do any penetration testing it is important make damn sure you have all your contracts and approvals properly signed. You don't rely on "but the CEO said so" or "We just tried some common passwords and did a few nmap scans - they shouldn't even notice", you get explicit approval first.

[2] If getting IRB approval too slow for the tech industry, they could try working with existing IRBs to try and come up with some new way of fast-tracking some types of experiments or they could create some sort of new mechanism that better fits the types of experiments would like to do regularly. The important part is that a 3rd party - not just the researchers - has vetted the experiment. The methods to get that approval can probably be modified.

[3] While it's not related at all to the topic of human testing and the IRB, HN readers my find the talk given by Joe Peacock at NOTACON 8 about how they (fark.com) screwed up their website redesign in the infamous "you'll get over it" incident. The point of the talk is about the dangers of violating the expectations of your users. Not only is it an ethical/legal issue in some cases, the attitude where the customer was not even involved in the change (even trivial) can cause them to leave you surprisingly fast. Simply asking or otherwise involving you users is the only real way to keep them in the long run. (it's fark, so mild NSFW language warning) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI

As I commented there, everybody concerned with this (especially the slashdot staff doing the change) needs to watch this talk by the people at Fark on how they failed - and recovered from - their "You'll get over it" moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI

This is one of the best discussions I've ever found about what is the most important lesson in running a "social" site: you involve your user in everything (do NOT surprise them with forced changes), or your members will find a new place to go hang out.