Comment by annowiki | Hacker News Reader

Comment by annowiki | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This is so depressing to read.

I'm a self-taught developer with no professional experience, but for over a year I learned everything I needed to know to build a massive web application to fulfill my own need: a collaborative annotation wiki. I poured my freaking heart into it and could never get a single user.

I drew on Jimmy Wales' experiences founding Wikipedia for a lot of inspiration. But got nowhere near the traction he got. As in, I got zero users after nine months since launch. Now it's largely a portfolio piece as I try to search for a real job in tech, by leveraging the 14,000 lines of code in Python/Flask to prove that I know how to develop an app. ( https://anno.wiki is the url if you're curious).

I can only hope that the real reasons I haven't gained traction are that (a) the interface just isn't welcoming enough (I tried too hard to do progressive enhancement with almost no experience in UX) and (b) simply not advertising. After a nine month break I'm getting ready to start re-developing a new front end in React to maybe make it more welcoming to non-techie lit nerds, and then maybe target advertise on Facebook, but I just don't know.

My deepest fear is just that the web is not an interesting place anymore, and Wikipedia just wouldn't get a foothold now, and that's why I can't. I just don't know.

Some comments on your wiki:

1. The contrast is way too low, I can barely read it.

2. The typesetting for Hamlet looks really nice.

3. Why would I want to use this?

Thank you for looking at it!

The basic idea was (is) to create a definitive resource for annotations on literature. Annotated information on any text is spread sloppily across different editions, from Oxford World Classics to Norton, and generally don't focus on the same issues. Much of it is commentary on textual issues, or only identify certain things. Entire passages will be detailed in one copy, but not in another.

Basically I just feel like there should be a definitive resource for deep reading. An ever more detailed pool of analytical interpretation. It's a dream, I just don't know that others are as interested in it as me.

There are certain resources, like Infinite Jest Page by Page[1] that were essentially a single book version of what I'm trying to accomplish and were super effective, but not very normalized or formalized. I really just hope to do something like that, on a larger scale, with more literature. My dream would be to also include copyright texts, viewable either through a token provided by a purchase of the text from the publisher, or by just searching for lines to see annotations. I really just want to create a super massive body of exhaustive and quasi-definitive annotations to all of the world's literature.

And yeah, the color scheme is apparently not very popular. It's really just my own implementation of Ethan Schoonover's light version of solarized[0], which is supposed to be what it's like to read a book in the shade on a bright summer day. But however romantic that sounds, it's not very popular.

[0]: https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/ [1]: https://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/in...

I don’t mind the contrast, the design looks pretty good to me but I don’t get what it’s for. It looks like a cross between Reddit and Wikipedia, and I bet most people go “huh” and move on.

More like, reading text printed in white directly on the blazing surface of the sun. ;)

You might find some interested parties in academia. I happen to have met a postgraduate once whose entire thesis was in the form of annotations. Apparently it's a big deal in lit academia, maybe you could become their Arxiv. Maybe when it comes time to market you could cold email a bunch of grad students.

The truth is that millions of people can, just like you, develop an app like this and the world only needs a few of those. Hence, there are thousands of failed attempts just like yours. It resembles the writing/music market, where there's way more creators than the public's appetite for their creations.

Congrats on building something. How about making landing page explaining what it is? Also you need to work on UI with some designer (I have similar problem when building apps)

Thank you! A landing page is something I've been thinking a lot about recently. I took a long break on it and am now getting back into it. I think I'm going to relegate this ui to old.anno.wiki and rebuild the front end in React. Will definitely be putting a landing page on there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com