Wrong. I would love to see more new features on reddit rather than waiting for them to re-write everything. The search function is still somewhat broken!

There is even competition of sorts: http://redditmedia.com/ That site displays thumbnails for stories...why doesn't reddit.com have an extra section or option/setting for that? So many good things could be done if not for this perfectionism bullshit.

Another good story: 37signals took a long time fixing Backpack and finally released a new version. Too late, I had already switched to Simple GTD. I don't get why they didn't incrementally improve things...I bet they've lost many more users due to their slowness.

Perfectionism is paralyzing.

Success is paralyzing.

Reddit certainly fell into that one big time. Digg has done a much better job at maintaining a fast development pace.

Sounds like practice coding to me, I am sure the experience you gained helped you write what you decided was worthy of releasing.

http://HowDoesJottitFormattingWork.jottit.com (same site in theory...doesn't seem to be working, though.)

Anybody know of where you can get more instructions on how to use it?

Handy for throwing together a random anonymous blog, I guess. Ad-supported, I assume?

edit: It's still there in history to be reverted.

And I just noticed...it didn't give a username for your edit. Can it be edited by literally -anyone-, member or not?

--Nevermind. You can set that up in the setting. The defaults are somewhat curious.

The focus is there. I've been lurking the web.py mail list for a long time (Jan 19, 2006 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/88347878/ ) and there has been a steady progression of code since then. So in my view it is being promoted, worked on and improved.

   "The programmers were in the corner doing what they were told. 
    That's one reason they were so easy to outsource. If a programmer 
    never really talks to the customer, never thinks, just solves little 
    puzzles, well that's a perfect candidate for something to offshore." 
    ~ Founders at Work, Ch24, Philip Greenspun, P325, Livingston, 2007.

Like programming languages:-)

I can only think of projects that involve a lot of drudge work that nobody wants to do unless they're paid to. I suppose this includes most services. What else has to be done by a company?

Even certain open source projects require paid staff. The only reason FireFox exists is because the Mozilla foundation can pay programmers to work on the ugly parts.

- Militance: They believe in a cause and do some sacrifices to further it. Like translating software and docs into an obscure language. This can be done by zealots of the software, of the language, or both.

- Self-image (somewhat related to the above): After having completed the sexy parts, you care about the appearance of your project as a whole, so you fill in the boring parts.

- Pleasing users (somewhat related to the above): You get hooked in a virtuous feedback cycle with your users. Some things that would be boring in themselves get done in anticipation of the positive feedback.

- Competitiveness: a mix of the two above. You want to be the best at what you do, and the boring stuff offers opportunities to differentiate.

- Scratch a personal itch: I think many Linux device drivers get done because of this. Also most of the external bug reporting (and most of the business sponsorship.)

- The long tail of vocation: what is boring to most is probably someone's joy.

- Retribution: You love an open source product as an user, so you give back.

- Social acceptance: You want to become part of the community of contributors. You aren't qualified to do the hard stuff yet.

In MMOG's, lots of people volunteer for Game Masters, which is an euphemism for unpaid customer service. They do very boring, repetitive work for the benefit of a for-profit company that gives them absolutely nothing in return (indeed, it's legally dangerous to give them anything in return).

So don't underestimate people's ability to do drudge work for free.

You can say they were motivated by a feeling of notoriety. In my area we have problems with people that would sneak and set woods on fire only so they can feel important helping to extinguish the fire. They get no tangible benefit from it, not even power, and they risk shame and jail if they get caught. Feeling relevant is a strong motivation for some people.

There are high stakes, business wise, in web search. But then again, that was just as true for operating systems and web browsers. So cross that one too.

Google is resource intensive. Open source is good at providing manpower, but not so good at sustaining huge running costs of other type. But then again, Google started quite small, and I'd guess Wikipedia, Usenet or Debian need more resources than many small companies. So, is it only a matter of size? In any event, this doesn't apply to Aaron's new startup.

Anything else?

I don't think it's only (or mainly) a matter of accountability. In general, volunteer services are given for the benefit of a community. Services targeted to individuals (except casual social interactions like answering questions) don't attract much volunteer effort, and are generally provided by for-profit companies.

The examples cited so far are basically special cases of this. Google needs to be able to enter into contracts for hosting, bandwidth, power, uptime, etc, so it needs to be a real corporation. When you entrust sensitive personal data, you want an ongoing obligation to keep that data secure, which you can't get with open-source. Additional examples might be corporate support contracts, support for certain platforms, and any service dealing with payment or finances.

Basically, open-source is good for sharing what people have done, while corporations are good for determining what people will do.

Hah, anyway I myself do enjoy webpy and wouldn't mind giving something back to it, but if I were him I'd probably rather do a startup.

PG wants to indulge with arc, he went ahed. But I don't remember him giving some insincere explanation.

I am now a strong believer in motherfucker's theory of insincerity http://atomicwang.org/motherfucker/Index/E06C66BF-E7D5-48FF-... (sorry, but that what he calls himself)

it never stops being tempting.

As for one true conception, I imagine it exists on many topics, though getting at it is rather tricky. I've certainly started to argue with people before only to find out, as I put it in writing, that I agreed with them, sometimes even for reasons they'd missed. So if the truth is so convoluted that you can never really know it, perhaps it functionally does not exist.

I now feel my counter argument to the sincerity thing is overhyped though. I don't have enough time to make it live up. Please don't read, you'll only be let down.

- Aaron applies to YC, starts Infogami with a co-founder who drops out (presumably because of Aaron's special interpersonal sparkles).

- Aaron launches Infogami, with a promise of a new feature every day.

- Aaron complains for a long time about how he doesn't have a co-founder, and then merges with Reddit.

- Aaron abandons Infogami (pissing off all its users, including me), and then proceeds not to do anything at Reddit, to the chagrin of the Reddits, who just effectively gave him a bunch of their stock. Aaron nevertheless has time for nauseatingly many melodramatic blog entries. - Reddit gets bought, and Aaron gets an equal share of the spoils.

- Aaron cries in the bathroom (literally), and then quits Wired, the acquiring company, by just not showing up to work. (And posts a suicidal blog entry, and proceeds to delete it.)

- Aaron does an interview in which he claims to have been part of Reddit from the beginning, pissing absolutely everyone off.

As far as the reddit guys go, there's a reason you're not supposed to do a startup with your closest friends. Aren't you supposed to hate your partner to some degree by the end? I know I did... But I understand that to be normal so I just relax and don't let that anger bother me outside of work.

The funny part is, for most people here, Aaron and Matt aren't reading your blog -- but you're reading theirs! This is like a Denial-Of-Service attack against their competition by inducing them to waste time they could be spending on their own startup instead reading about someone else's.

Id software was a master at this. Everyone was so busy playing Quake, Quake II, etc. that they weren't working on their own games. Did you know actual celebrities are horrible at recognizing other celebrities? They are too busy making movies to read celebrity gossip magazines.

Speaking of, I probably should get back to work!

Get features out often. Of course make sure they don't break anything else, or reduce the users experience, but users love to see a site evolving and changing with them on board.

So you'd better be a Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs is a huge perfectionist. However he will make you work 70+ hours a week to achieve his perfection and he will ride you every step of the way to get the best out of you. http://www.folklore.org

The key is accepting that people prefer products to promises, and just going ahead with something that's good enough without it being perfect.

It feels like there are two forms of design: "release early and release often" and "release it perfectly". Very few people have the taste necessary to find success in the latter.

Holding something to yourself until it is "perfect" is a solo quest. You may spend too much time on the wrong things and no time on the right things. But you also won't release something that is completely broken.

Aha, now we know what to call that solo quest for perfection: premature optimization.

Just make it look a tiny bit nicer, get a few mentions on various blogs and you'll be fine. A PayPal donate link may help too?

We're just refocusing the site. I'll toss you an email with the outline of the redesign so you can approve or disapprove it.

Edit: Email away

It's currently a productivity site. You'll say "I'm going to run every day". When you've done it you check back to the site and make a post about it and attach a photo. Your post is shared with everyone else doing the same thing as you, and you can upvote posts.

I always took them to be the same thing. In that sense, you're either adding a feature or you're stagnating. (Or, I suppose, going backwards.)

In short, having fewer features is often the best feature.

(points to all the billion dollar networking sites on the news)

perfection??? I think most software sucks so much that it doesn't do anything useful. It would be better to try and get your product to do just one thing that is useful for one person.

Aiming for perfection is just an excuse for not building something useful.