I just signed up for your hackernews pod. Here is some feedback, if you want it:
1. Why is there a minimum commitment to post? It makes it more difficult to overcome the inertia required to sign up in the first place.
2. Why do I need to write an intro before I can see any content? Without seeing any content, I don't know if it's worth spending any time writing up an intro. This really rubbed me the wrong way. I haven't written an intro yet, although I will probably half-ass one just to get a look at what kind of discussions are taking place.
The minimum commitment of posting once every 25 days is mostly an incentive to keep people active. In my experience, if these groups go a certain amount of time without activity, they're effectively dead anyway.
Regarding the requirement to post an introduction - it's my experience that without this requirement, there's often barely enough activity in the beginning to even get things started in a given group. While I do lose about 30% of people who sign up and decide not to post an intro, the introduction posts are usually the nucleus for all discussion that follows.
As far as half-ass writing an intro - that's completely fine, and a lot of people do that too. I should make it more clear that that's 100% fine - if you want to write "hello, just curious about what's going on here" that works.
1. Why is there a minimum commitment to post? It makes it more difficult to overcome the inertia required to sign up in the first place.
2. Why do I need to write an intro before I can see any content? Without seeing any content, I don't know if it's worth spending any time writing up an intro. This really rubbed me the wrong way. I haven't written an intro yet, although I will probably half-ass one just to get a look at what kind of discussions are taking place.