@dfox would be a huge process to add polls/surveys as a feature? I see a lot of "what do you use?" posts, I think it would be awesome if they could be facilitated and possibly measured.

Hm, this sounds like a programming challenge for third-parties.

http://devRantPolls.io/

Here you will see a feed that only lists items with the tag devRantPolls and you can vote there. Optionally votes could be forwarded to http://devrant.io in some specific format.

Should we make it happen?

Alternatively I could turn that into a feature for my chrome extension.

I think first party support would be preferable, a chrome extension could provide a widget-y interface, but then mobile misses out.

@rozzzly Agreed, if they are not too busy.

I wish it was open sauce 😯 I would totally PR that feature.

And allow editing comments! Jesus plz too may typos overlooked when on mobile.

too many** typos

^ see! @dfox

@rozzzly You're right, it's kinda odd that a social network that is 100% geared towards developers is not open source.

idk maybe they want eventually monitize it and are just protecting their ip?

but even an empty github repo where we could file bugs, discuss feature requests would be nice

@rozzzly Empty github repo makes a lot of sense.

@rozzzly Yea but this app seems pretty simple to me. I was able to reverse engineer most of the api calls (also authenticated ones) and reproduce them in java and javascript.

So I don't think they have any nice secrets to save.

@sheeponmeth

literally just 45sec time investment is required.

I've seen a lot of people ranting about the app/platform, we have input and were literally all devs, the community would self-organize pretty damn well.

but, then again. idk how the admins feel about giving over the wheel to the crowd/to what extent

@ChappIO agreed. But given the context of the app and the community, it's just suspicious theres no repo even an empty one.

so I get the feeling they have some reservations? idk just speculating

Hm maybe yea, sad because I love this community a lot, I'd love to dev parts for it

It's funny.. no one seems to understand that this platform is for ranting, not asking for help, doing market research or similar.

It would not fit the purpose.. Damn, "rant" is in the name.. that does not mean that every post on here is a rant, that means that every post SHOULD be.

--

I understand why it's not open source too, it's their business. Clones/forks appear in the app stores, and behave as competitors.

You can submit feedback in the app or as a review.

Sublime Text is also geared towards developers and is closed source too, which is totally acceptable; how should they earn *real* money if they gave away their only product? "But Atom is open source" - yes, but behind them are Github, earning tons of money from other products.. (Github is also, closed source - yet geared towards developers too)

Dfox and the team is doing a great job, and ofc. they will monetize it later; currently they're throwing money at it (stickers and such), they must want some return.

@ChappIO imma try to withhold judgement, wait for @dfox and them to respond

@SithLord the way they can earn money is by the community. Their business is not the app or the Web, their business is the community.

@ChappIO yes indeed, however that does not mean that they should open source their application. That would be a dangerous business move, I see the appeal from a developers perspective, but not as a business

@SithLord Sure, that has been the open source consideration since the start of it :)

@ChappIO well said!
@SithLord I think reddit is a better reference point considering that they and devRant are basically the same thing albiet with vastly differing levels if complexity

Some good comments/suggestions here. Unfortunately though, a lot is over-simplified. First, there's an assumption that because there's an idea for a feature that some people like, then we definitely want to add it. That's definitely not the case. Like has already been proven by other comments on this rant, there are opposing viewpoints to many feature ideas. It's our job to properly vet these features and figure out if they'd benefit the community and have a positive overall impact. The suggestion in this rant seems like a good idea, but there's still many issues with it and things to take into consideration.

Following from that, having the app be open source doesn't really achieve a lot in regards to features. There's a very common misconception that adding every new feature that seems cool makes an app better. We don't believe that to be true. We think there are certain features and other non-feature ideas that will take devRant to the next level.

On the topic of open sourcing: I've always said it's a big goal of ours to open source useful components of devRant to give back to the community. While the actual mobile apps aren't overly complex, most of our proprietary assets right now are on the database layer (graph), algorithm, and other backend architecture. As you can probably imagine, open sourcing some of that is fairly difficult and very time consuming.

While the comparison to Reddit is interesting, it should be noted they raised $50 million and we're completely self-funded. We've invested our time and money in devRant as a community and app which they did too, and open sourcing devRant would make more sense after we have more resources to actually manage the project and make sure, even after open sources, it still maintains the quality we strive for.

Lastly, I think a GitHub repo for issues is a good idea, which we are heavily considering, but saying it's a "45 second task" I think shows lack of understanding for managing a project like this. Just like the code you write, any component or feature we launch for devRant has to be properly maintained (and also publicized). We can't have an unmaintained list of GitHub issues that just pile up. We receive hundreds of feedback items a month right now. It also adds friction for offering feedback, which isn't a show stopper but is another thing to consider.

@dfox I think it's awesome that you guys are so engaged with the community.

@sheeponmeth thanks, we really enjoy it!