I don't know how to phrase this in an HN-approved positive way, but I think it needs to be said: the graphics are disturbingly infantilizing if this site is supposed to be for anyone over the age of 9.
* "Fun" graphics? Check.
* Cartoon characters? Check.
* Whimsical name? Check.
* "Safe space" marketing? Check.
* Close control of who can access it? Check.
Literally the only thing they need to add to be a children's website is a note about parental controls.
Cute whimsical silly graphics are fun. Feeling like I've walked into a padded room/kindergarten when I hit their homepage due to the visual/copy combination is not fun.
We chose to go in this direction because it made all of us happy to go to work every day, and whenever we showed people different versions of our site, whether it was family and friends or in more formal user testing, people tended to like it more with the dinosaurs than without. It's okay if you don't like it, or even if a lot of different people don't like it.
Though, fwiw, once you got off that page it looks more like a regular site and there aren't as many dinos.
If this is the Reddit for 9-year-olds, spot on! I also think there are some other (older) demos who would be attracted to a space like this, but I'm interested in who you think it is.
Also, I'm sorry for the negativity (some of it from me). While I largely agree with the commentary here (that the world doesn't necessarily need a safe space community), I know how hard it is to put anything new out there and commend you for trying to improve upon Reddit. I genuinely wish an HN for "other things" existed and hope you can succeed.
It sounds like there's definitely some stuff we could be doing to improve our branding--we're new and we're learning, and the word "positive" seems to have been misconstrued by everyone from what we meant it to be to who we are as a company.
One thing, just as a note, is that we're not trying to be a "safe space" community, and we're not trying to censor disagreement, remove negativity, or even get rid of all hate and mean comments. Those all have a purpose, and without them it becomes an empty echo chamber and there's no point in actually talking.
Also, the fact that we're trying to take a stronger stance on harassment is just a tiny, tiny bit of what we're doing differently. We're not trying to be a safer Reddit, or even trying to be a direct Reddit competitor.
What we've built is in response to issues we've seen in all different platforms--Reddit, sure, but also Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Patreon, and more. We've tried to build a really broad, flexible platform that makes it so communities can do all the things they want to in one place, with a developer platform to make sure that's possible. We've built in a payments system. We've designed it to be more user and mobile friendly instead of an outdated forum style. Those are honestly the things that I care most about, and the possibilities they open are what I think will have the biggest impact on hopefully making Imzy a really viable community platform that I want to work on, not the things that we're trying to prevent.
Then whom do you see as your direct competitors?
Do you believe it's possible for Anti-GG people as well as GG people to harass?
I ask because the prevailing culture at Twitter and Github is that harassment only comes from one direction: from white men. They don't want to act on claims of "reverse-discrimination".
However, many other people like myself believe that there is an equal or greater amount of harassment and threats from the Social Justice world.
I'm genuinely interested to know your attitude about this.
It doesn't matter if it's GG or anything else. People tend to have valid complaints on both sides, regardless of how small, and both tend to have some guilt. People on both sides oversimplify the arguments of the other side and overgeneralize their actions as all black people this, or all white people this, or all men this, or all women this, or all... etc. And when that happens, it's bad regardless of who the group is and which side they're on, because it's guaranteed to be inaccurate about a vast number of people who are being unfairly characterized as something they're not.
There's a reason the term "social justice warrior" has come into existence, and it's because the people on what might generally be seen as the "good" or "right" side of the issue can also become way to militant, and when you become militant, you stop trying to work together to fix things, get people to see your way, and bring the sides together and start just trying to kill off the other side in order to win. (Now, I do think that term gets thrown around WAY too loosely for anyone who does anything you don't like and is often not accurate, but that goes back to the above paragraph.) Social justice is good. Social justice warriors are not.
Sorry for lots of rambling. It's hard to talk about such a complex issue concisely.
Honestly, I don't even think there is consensus on what social justice is. If you asked ten people who love social justice to define it, you'll get twelve answers, especially if you ask about specific reforms and initiatives.
And you'll get glaring omissions. Complex tax codes and opaque regulations are great for the powerful and awful for the little guy. Fixing them isn't considered social justice for some reason, though.
Also, just as a note, "safe space" was the author's words, not ours. We're taking a stronger stance on harassment, sure, but there's still plenty of room for negativity and disagreement. You can read more in my other comments if you care to hear more about our philosophy.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to me!
IMHO, I feel like you are doing it the wrong way around. When I open a website for the first time, I usually only have a very general idea of its purpose. When I see the home page of Imzy, I do not think “Oh this is ridiculous, no serious general purpose forum for good conversation should look like this”, but rather “Oh, I guess it's more targeted at children-specific topics, like simple games, learning a first language, and basic maths, at most. Probably not for me, I'll go look elsewhere.”.
OTOH, if you have a less ambivalent home page, I do not really care what the actual website looks like, as long as it is usable (design is first about usability). So, sure, dinos all the way!
I see you have put a few screnshots that illustrate the kinds of topics that should interest the Imzy's community. However, most users won't ever bother to scroll, and those who will, won't scroll that far. Putting the examples so that they are visible with no scrolling (and maybe including discussions in addition to article/self-text) would go a long way
Also, your <noscript> elements (that you use for storing sending static data to the client) are visible when Javascript is disabled. I see you have a CSS rule to hide them and it seems to work well in Chromium 49.0.2623.108, but not in Mozilla Firefox 45.0.2
The internet was not built to be, or should it ever be, a safe place for every single human being on Earth. Contradictory and radical ideas are a necessary part of progressive discourse and they will make people feel uncomfortable and angry. Deal with it.