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Rajiv Ayyangar

New forum guidelines

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The Product hunt community is amazing, and I know there's lots of knowledge to share. I want to make the forums the most vibrant forums for product builders on the internet! To that end we've re-designed forums, defined sub-forums, and introduced product-specific forums, and we've drafted new guidelines to keep the discussions vibrant, authentic, and genuinely useful. The new guidelines are here - https://help.producthunt.com/en/... - you can read them in full, but here's my summary: When posting a new forum thread, ask yourself:

1) Is this a genuine question I have that I want the community to answer? 2) Is this an insight that will be helpful to other builders and product geeks?

If the answer isn't a confident "Yes" to one of those, don't post the thread. As an addendum to 1: When posting a question, please provide enough detail for the community to answer your question. Instead of: Subject: Analytics tools Post: "What's the best analytics tool for startups? do this: Subject: Analytics tools Post: I built a note-taking app, , and we launched 6 months ago. I'm trying to understand user behavior and I've been using for analytics. I'm considering switching to something like Mixpanel or Metabase. What do other people use for user behavior analytics? What other questions should I be asking?

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Natalia Eiriz
thanks for the new guidelines! Just a question, how can we find specific threads? I haven't been able to find a search tool for that in the page
Rohan Chaubey
I mod r/GrowthHacking alongside Ryan Holiday (60K members, 1M+ impressions annually), majority of our new members do not understand which flair to use on their posts. So we used to tag them manually while moderation. I believe topics are equivalent of flairs at PH. How does PH team ensure everyone selects the right categories? Example, a self-promotion post that says they are launching on PH next month can be categorised under general instead of self promotion. Does the PH team change the categories? Suggestion for product forums: Currently the utility of product forums is a bit unclear. Example, p/voicenotes just has their launch post under the forum. Maybe PH team or any active PH user / power users of the products or the makers of these products can be appointed as mods of the product forums and their role could be to engage users, encourage participation and produce content related to the product. This is similar to unpaid mods of Reddit subreddit. This will ensure the product forums stay active long-term by delegating management to power users or product owners while PH team still is in control just like Reddit admins have super access over mods of specific subreddits. Not to mention, this improves SEO for Product Hunt. People searching for product related queries may end up discovering the threads on PH.
Rajiv Ayyangar
@rohanrecommends a solid suggestion - this is the direction we're heading.
Chris Messina
Top Hunter
Can we report comments that we perceive as "not genuine"? :)
Rajiv Ayyangar
@chrismessina we're working on a "Report" feature. In the meantime you can send a link to hello@
Rajiv Ayyangar
@chrismessina you can now report comments via "Report" or forum threads via the three dots by the initial post.
Neel Patel
Are we getting ourselves a new reddit?
Confidence Onumabor
@neelptl2602 looks like it. But I think PH would do better than Reddit😃
Rajiv Ayyangar
@neelptl2602 certainly we've taken inspiration from some elements of Reddit!
Konrad S.
I'd suggest renaming the "Self-promotion" sub-forum to something like "Your products and projects" * If we talk about our own products that's not necessarily primarily self-promotion, we may e.g. just want to give insights or connect with others working on similar things * I think no one really wants to watch others "promote themselves", instead we want to get insights into their projects etc. * "Self-promotion" simply has kind of a negative connotation * The guidelines discourage self-promotion Is there a reason not to introduce more specific forums like * Technical * Marketing * Business * Big questions * Personal * PH launch? Would sure make it easier for people to find what they're interested in...
Rajiv Ayyangar
@konrad_sx I meant it to be a bit humorous. We should all be self-promoting and getting better at telling our products’ story! But the feedback is noted. As for sub forums, we’ll eventually get there but for now I think it’s more interesting to have the bulk of the product conversation in either general or product subforums.
Konrad S.
@rajiv_ayyangar I see ... I fear I'm lacking humor then :( sorry! I agree that it also has advantages to have one large instead of many small forums. (one could of course also have the best of both approaches: Require posts to be tagged with a specific "subtopic" and have filters for them)
Ash G
I like these new guidelines. These will encourage users to ask more thoughtful and specific questions, rather than just the usual generic ones.
LESLEY LIU
Thanks for sharing! Just one suggestion: Could the PH Team add a 'search thread' function to the page? The current search button in the upper left corner only allows searching for products and users, not threads...
Samar Ali
Launching soon!
Thanks for sharing the updated forum guidelines!
Ankit Sharma
Great! This is much better than the previous discussion. Thanks
Sonu Goswami
Gr88...Good Luck!
Zac Zuo
This forum update on PH is a good step! Reddit-like structure makes all the topics easier to follow. For 'Product Forums' section, it seems like not every product is able to have its own sub-page there, are the sub-pages within that section still by invitation now?
Kay Kwak
Launching soon!
This will make the forum more lively! Thank you
Genevieve Lopez
Will posts get removed if they don't meet criteria?
Shifa Rehman
That sounds professional. Let's keep these in mind for future postings.
A welcoming revamp, @rajiv_ayyangar! Kudos, PH team 👏🏽 Have been waiting for something like this for quite a while. Looking forward to great discussions!
Vill Yu
Launching soon!
Curious to see how PH reinforce such guidelines
Benjamin Boman

Love this direction. But what is the purpose of product-specific forums?