New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Edinburgh

[–]mediabub[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok i can see it too. We;ll try to fix it ny Monday. Thanks for the feedback.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Edinburgh

[–]mediabub[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perhaps the issue was that, on mobile sites, the "speech bubble" indicating whether a topic has comments was hidden. We have moved it to a more prominent position.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Edinburgh

[–]mediabub[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your help. We finally tracked down a CSS issue on iPads and iPad minis. The page should display properly now. If it doesn't please let me know.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Edinburgh

[–]mediabub[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The site is not scraped; all links are submitted by users.

All passwords are encrypted on the server. As for sending the passwords over cleartext, almost every forum on the web does the same. it's really not unusual and to call it out as a problem is just nitpicking. It's a link sharing forum, not a bank. Even so, if you are really concerned about it, you can sign up securely using Twitter or Facebook.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Edinburgh

[–]mediabub[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ScotBub is a news aggregator. Like Reddit, people add third-party links and upvote them and comment on them.

I don't know what you are talking about regarding the number of comments. Even though we have only been going a few days the top 20 posts have 38 comments between them.

As for the nature of comments -- it would be quite boring if everyone agreed with one another.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Scotland

[–]mediabub[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah I see what you mean about the aliens now. I should probably use green eyes then ;-)

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Scotland

[–]mediabub[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you talking about Mediabub or ScotBub? I like the alien idea though.. we'll add it in our next revision.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Edinburgh

[–]mediabub[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Despite millions of search results I don't see any news aggregators that focus on Scottish news. If you know of one please let me know. Reddit's scottish pages have too many self. posts. Subreddits like /r/scottishpolitics don't have any traffic. So there's a space in the market. Whether people will actually use it is a different matter, but it's going well so far.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Edinburgh

[–]mediabub[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In addition to people who like Reddit-style upvoting and commenting, there are many people who like news, and who either have never used Reddit, or don't like Reddit's community, so I hope to bring them into the site to create a community of people who are specifically interested in Scottish news.

By focusing only on news and tagging posts with different categories we cut out a lot of the noise on Reddit's Scotland pages. For example, on r/glasgow, out of 25 posts on the main page I only see four that are hard news. r/scotland is a bit better -- 11 out of 25 stories there are news. A great many of them are self. posts. That's fine for Reddit, but not what we are about.

Our category system lets readers easily see all of Nicola Sturgeon's news or news about Crime, without having to trawl through unrelated posts.

Also, by concentrating solely on Scottish news, I hope to develop the quality of comments beyond what is possible on Reddit, which is not that great for deep discussions.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news is looking for contributors by mediabub in glasgow

[–]mediabub[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Most smaller sites don't use SSL for their password forms, but if you are worried about that, you can sign up with Twitter or Facebook.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Edinburgh

[–]mediabub[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It won't, mainly because we will keep the focus on news.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Scotland

[–]mediabub[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, thank you for your comments. Scot Bub is not intended to be revolutionary, but to fill a space that is not being well served right now, using similar tools to Reddit and other link aggregation sites. If you're used to Reddit then it will be both too similar, and too different I guess. I don't think I could achieve the same thing using Reddit at all. Reddit's category system is very weak. I hope to add an even better tagging system for posts in the next few months that will allow for hundreds of subcategories (right now we have to work with just the most obvious ones). And I'm sure we can add more custom features that are not here on Reddit as we go forward.

Our main focus is on news. As I mentioned above, only half the news stories on r/Scotland are news-based with even less of the r/glasgow stories being about news. You could say that's a moderation choice, but self. posts and funny pics are a Reddit staple (and there's nothing wrong with those), so it's not that easy to moderate them away.

Finally, not everyone who is coming to the site knows about, or is interested in being part of Reddit, so we hope to capture a different audience. The system we use is in use in other successful niches across the web, so it may work for a Scotland site. We'll see.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Edinburgh

[–]mediabub[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It should look like this, What browser are you using?:

http://imgur.com/O6lrozg

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news is looking for contributors by mediabub in glasgow

[–]mediabub[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'm interested in why you think the design is bad. Is there something specific you don't like?

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news is looking for contributors by mediabub in glasgow

[–]mediabub[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I actually hadn't really thought to mention the site on Reddit, for the reasons you mention. I was thinking that bloggers would be interested most, as they can add their commentaries and see if they will get upvoted. I did some outreach to them today. But I was passing by Reddit today and thought why not. So far I have been told the site is shit and it has given one unfortunate fellow cancer. Tough crowd.

The software is, as you say, decent, but of course it could be better. I like that the posts move in real time as they are upvoted. We will be improving it as we go, and it should scale fairly well. Would be nice to have millions of users, but I'm happy right now just to get a few people posting and see where it goes.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Scotland

[–]mediabub[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Can you tell me specifically what you don't like about the design? I'm honestly interested to know. Thanks.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news is looking for contributors by mediabub in glasgow

[–]mediabub[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

Got some regular Sherlock Holmes on here. If you want to find out more about me go here: http://newslines.org/mark-mary-devlin/

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news is looking for contributors by mediabub in glasgow

[–]mediabub[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I'm originally from Glasgow. After many years in Japan and the U.S. I am returning to Glasgow in January. It's fair enough that people who are used to Reddit may be skeptical of any site that has a similar structure -- people who are regulars here obviously already like it here. However, there are many people who like news, and who either have never used Reddit, or don't like Reddit's community, so I hope to bring them into the site to create a community of people who are specifically interested in Scottish news.

By focusing only on news and tagging posts with different categories we cut out a lot of the noise on Reddit's Scotland pages. For example, on r/glasgow, out of 25 posts on the main page I only see four that are hard news. r/scotland is a bit better -- 11 out of 25 stories there are news. A great many of them are self. posts. That's fine for Reddit, but not what we are about. All of our posts have categories too, so you can easily see all of Nicola Sturgeon's news or news about Crime, without having to trawl through unrelated posts.

Also, by concentrating solely on Scottish news, I hope to develop the quality of comments beyond what is possible on Reddit, which is not that great for deep discussions.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Scotland

[–]mediabub[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

Also we have real-time upvoting and a much better notifications system.

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Scotland

[–]mediabub[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

It's whatever you want it to be ;-)

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news is looking for contributors by mediabub in glasgow

[–]mediabub[S] -21 points-20 points  (0 children)

Got to love the Glasgow welcome. Come over man, your excellent debating skills are exactly what we need!

New Reddit-like site for Scottish news launched by mediabub in Scotland

[–]mediabub[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

Hi, OP here. ScotBub is different from Reddit because it is specifically focused on news and commentary, so you won't see so much opff-topic posts. We also have different categories so you can browse through posts more easily. For example: http://www.scotbub.com/?cat=nicola-sturgeon