I've played around with creating a relevant version of things like usenet, but at the end of the day it wasn't something I wanted to work on. A large part of the work is correcting for flaws of the Internet that most "hackers" won't recognize. And while you could certainly overcome those problems, I don't think the end result would be worth it. Much of the "hacker crowd" these days aren't, in my opinion, motivated by naive curiosity and shallow idealism (like it used to be), but forced nativity to further their own interests and a opinionated demeanor. That's why many of these alternative services don't work out. Because they aren't motivated by creating something that is nice to use, but to satisfy the convoluted criteria of the creators.

It took a lot of effort to make a long post back in the rec. And alt. days.

I remember trip planning 19 years ago looking at trip reports. Got superior tips for my once in a lifetime Yukon vacation

I dont believe todays internet noise partially because it is too easy to opinionate. There is no effort required anymore.

I have twitter for high freq thin data, reddit for a bit more dense information~. For deeper information I could read serious journals, books. But I rarely need that, or am not capable of digesting it.

The force fed thing is inherent to the change of importance and structure of the web.. Remember when Google was an entry point to the mess and not the conductor ?

That's why they were awful. When they died or stopped being popular you lost all your contacts and had to start from scratch somewhere else. With open protocols you don't have that issue at all.

> As much as I really liked using IRC back in the day

You don't have to speak in channels to make use of IRC. I use it for private chats (I know it's not "private", but that's better for me than using any proprietary client and IRC has clients on every platform).

While this is totally fine for internet-savvy people, I can see why regular people who just want to chat turn to alternatives.

Back in the day, I posted to newsgroups via Mixmaster remailers :) Now one can use VPNs and Tor.

Looks like a quip/discourse clone from a 10 second look. Not sure why another product offering relatively the same service solves anything.

Lyra is a discussion platform targeted at a general audience. We're a nonprofit and aim to improve the quality and attentional demands of online conversation.

It doesn't take long to determine that while you have laudable goals, there doesn't appear to be a significant differentiation either technically or realistically that makes your product worth spending more time on.

For one, the quality of conversation isn't a technical or platform issue, but an audience/participant problem. I didn't see anything particularly unique that would make Lyra better as a conversation platform, or at achieving your stated goals, than any other services, open or subscription. An open forum with conversations isn't a "new" idea. A tree based conversation threading system isn't "new" or "novel" or "unique". Having Private and Public chats, groups and profiles etc.. are far from new or unique features for a conversation platform either.

So yes, "10 seconds" was enough to determine that you've got a great idea with crappy execution, no audience, are trying to solve social problems with "technical" solutions (and those technical solutions are not new or unique to the problem space). You don't actually provide anything of value, and my initial assessment that you've just gone and re-invented the wheel looks pretty accurate.

Also, your branding/naming is horrible. A search for Lyra shows multiple other products and services, I gave up looking for you after 5 pages of search results for everything but your product. That's a black hole.

Your persistence in trying to advertise this service in a post basically pointing out how people like you re-inventing the wheel in your own platform to solve the same problem over and over again is the problem is actually highly entertaining for me.

The fact your a non-profit only further makes me laugh. You've got no product differentiation, only philosophical ones (that aren't even unique), and no mature funding model, and you want people to use your product?

I expect another downvote for this, because you don't seem to like someone pointing out sense. I can't think of a better example of the xkdc comic/protocol joke than this in recent memory and I work with software engineers daily.

Lyra is a discussion platform targeted at a general audience. We're a nonprofit and aim to improve the quality and attentional demands of online conversation.

There's nothing like this in the space.

We did not claim to be "new," "novel" or "unique."

If you would like to elaborate on what is "crappy" about the execution, we will be able to address your concerns more directly.

We're not aiming to be findable on Google via a search for "Lyra." Our execution of this requirement may be "horrible," but as it's not one of our requirements, we're fine with that.

We're already sustainable, which is in our opinion a mature funding model.

We would finally like to add that "sense" has a different meaning for each of the billions of people on this planet.