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Comment by wewewedxfgdf | Hacker News Reader

I know this will come across as negative but design matters for something like this.

Can't they afford $5K for websites and UI design? Everything here looks absolutely terrible.

Its a negative take but they're asking me to consider this as an alternative to YouTube - how it presents is critically important.

Also, the website root should not talk about peertube, it should drop me into peertube

And a final gripe..... Can't they get a better domain than "joinpeertube.org" - really almost anything would be better.

Sorry this is such a grumble but so many obvious self sabotaging obstacles to success.

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Peertube is software to run a video hosting website. There are many unaffiliated sites that use it. Would you expect nginx.org to drop you "into" nginx and complain that it is not Facebook, or would you expect to find information about nginx?

If you want to visit a particular installation of the software, you go there. e.g. KDE has an instance for their videos[0]. They link to some of their big users, but the site you're commenting on is not itself a video hosting service.

[0] https://tube.kockatoo.org/home

>Would you expect nginx.org to drop you

I wouldn't expect that, but I can't tell how much of that is my intuition, and how much of that is my cynicism speaking. He has a point. Nginx is marketed towards people who know what the hell an http server is, merely being one of the best (or one of the only, I suppose) http servers is enough... no more marketing is needed. But with Peertube, it does not matter how good the software is. That sounds insulting to type out, I keep wanting to backspace over it, but it's true.

It matters how many people use it. Basically, every single person who ever steals a glance at it needs to be a convert. People who can't appreciate the beauty of the technical solution.

>If you want to visit a particular installation of the software,

You're reading him wrong. He doesn't want to "visit a particular installation". He wants it to succeed. So do I. I like the idea enough that I want it to succeed for that alone, and not necessarily because if it did it might start murdering Youtube (though that too). But it can't do that when it looks like a turd and behaves like a turd to any Joe Schmoe who happens to stumble across it.

Why does everyone need to be a convert? I'm not even sure that anyone needs to be a "convert" for it to succeed. e.g. MIT OCW uses youtube as its main host right now, which is not a great fit for CC BY-NC-SA material (ads + difficult downloading directly contradict that license). They could run a peertube instance to make it easy for users to exercise their rights while still posting it to youtube for reach. Or similar to how the mathematics community has moved from Twitter to Mathstodon, they could run a peertube instance for lectures, lean conference talks, etc.

Joe Schmoe doesn't need to know what peertube even is. Whoever is going to set it up for an organization/community does. If Joe is in such a community, finding their instance works the same as finding their youtube channel: you link to it. Actually it works better because by nature of being small and focused, the instance lets you easily discover related channels or make your own and have it discoverable by the community. Youtube discoverability is actually kind of trash by comparison, and relies on search (which requires you to know what you want already) or popularity/"the algorithm" for recommendations.

Since Joe doesn't need to know what it is, they don't market to Joe. They talk to community managers and IT people, e.g. on their front page:

> PeerTube is a tool that you install on a web server. It allows you to create a video hosting website, so create your "homemade YouTube".

It's never going to achieve "success" in the sense that the latest Mr Beast or Megan Thee Stallion video is there, but that's okay. Those aren't the target audience.

>They could run a peertube instance to

They could. But then 6 months later, they'll review the logs, see no one's really watching it there, and will get bored with supporting it. Then it's on the chopping block. Which, because of networking effects, subtly hurts other instances at other organizations. As there are fewer things to view with Peertube, fewer people go out and discover any further content with it because they never started watching it in the first place.

Sort of reminded of this one shopping mall I used to go to as a kid in Ohio. Looked it up a few years ago, completely empty except for one store on the bottom flood... do you think that store sees any extra foot traffic?

>Joe Schmoe doesn't need to know what peertube even is.

Someone who wanted to kill Peertube dead with fire couldn't murder it as thoroughly as your attitude does. You get that right?

False equivalence.

My points stand, intact.

If this thing wants to comete with YouTube no matter it position in the stack - especially at the top of the stack...... it must look awesome.

Yes, the back end web site must look awesome to compete with YouTube.

"Design and UX don't matter cause we are just engineers" is what led to Mastadon being rejected by users even when Elon Musk/Twitter gave Mastodon the biggest free hit it would ever get.

"This can look garbage cause its back end" does not work when your site aims to take on YouTube.

And if it does not aim to take on YouTube as some other commenters have said, then what's the point of it?

I mostly agree with the criticisms of design. I'm endlessly frustrated that Mastodon was first on the block, but Blue Sky ate its lunch, for reasons that seem almost entirely to hinge on having been smarter about design. And even Mastodon was a huge leap forward from the characteristic quality of open source social media alternative sites that had existed previously. I still think in its own way Mastodon's design is quite impressive. But Peertube is dropping the ball, I think, compared to some other Fedeiverse projects. And peertube, I would say, is arguably one of the most important projects.

When it comes to the joinpeertube domain, however, that follows a long-standing tradition of fediverse sites to use those as a jumping-off point to discover instances. I don't think that can be roped into the category of transgressions along the lines of the previous ones.

> Can't they afford $5K for websites and UI design? Everything here looks absolutely terrible.

Can you give examples? People in the thread aren't even clear whether you're talking about a Peertube instance or joinpeertube.org.

> but they're asking me to consider this as an alternative to YouTube - how it presents is critically important.

I'm probably in the minority, but I've hated Youtube's design since Youtube first came out. Really cluttered. There's a reason people made several alternative frontends to Youtube, and it's mostly not to avoid ads. Youtube's design just sucks (according to many).

> the website root should not talk about peertube, it should drop me into peertube

> Can't they get a better domain

Maybe the website you were looking for is https://peer.tube

> Can't they afford $5K for websites and UI design? Everything here looks absolutely terrible.

Have you attempted at doing that contribution yourself? Be the change you want to see.

I also don't understand having a search interface not front-and-center and under the weird sub-brand of "SepiaSearch".

Completely agree. I actually think Sepia search is quite good. It's what peer tube desperately needs and it's so much better than the individual search features on all the different instances which are a complete mess. So I don't understand why it's pulled out into a separate brand and separate domain.

I'm honestly confused. Are you complaining about "joinpeertube.org" or the typical Peertube instance? If the former ... why would you want it to have any search capability? It's not a video host. If the latter (e.g. https://peer.tube/), the search is not at all hard to find.

Think you are confused about what it is, it's a piece of software for hosting videos. Might be worth reading the frontpage https://joinpeertube.org/ . As an example, blender has https://video.blender.org/ with blender videos. It's kind of like mediawiki is wiki software but it isn't wikipedia.

The part which seems to be confusing you is that these platforms can ( don't have to ) network together to make a larger apparent platform that has some resemblance to youtube.

Having said that, the actual platform is kind of meh in terms of UI design. It does look like a very budget youtube clone as if it was a "learn to make a youtube clone in 1 hour using html css!"

A sentence is not a paragraph.

Do you have a more substantive reply to the user you’re replying to? These are genuine observations/experiences. If you disagree or think they are misguided, then point them out.

The issue is that the main comment in the thread complained about design, but gave little concrete information to discuss. If I come and say "Design matters, and HN's design sucks. Go and compare it to Reddit/whatever other site," you likely will have little idea of what my beef with HN is.

Of course it is. It's usually avoided depending on the level of formality/style of the writing, but there is no grammatical rule that says a paragraph cannot be one sentence long.

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