I promise to keep this site up for 10 years with no changes to the style or core function (Jan 3rd, 2022).
A very boring site that forces you to read the article before you can read the comments.
This is a living document so it will change over time. I haven't figured out how I want to handle it but for now this is all tracked through git.
It is January 3rd, 2022. I wanted to truly launch tomorrow but I've left off some important things like writing down what this site is and how to use it. I'm also still grappling with encrypting data and it makes me uncomfortable to know that I can do a simple sql query to see all of your notes. But if I let all the things that I have yet to do, stop me, I'll never launch this site. I originally wanted to launch in November of 2021. That is crazy! I also have much to write about but all of that will be on pause.
This site came about from the idea that I go straight to the comments when I read a site like reddit or hackernews. Many people I imagine do the same thing. Something about comments is more palatable than reading an article. Maybe it's because its easier to take someone else's opinion as your own, instead of thinking and coming to your own opinion. I was just passively consuming content and taking on ideas that weren't really my own and this bothered me. So I decided to make a site that would force me to write down something first, before letting me into the comments.
Leftwrite comes with a few sites already set up, so you can take a look in the user profile, under sources to see how things are done. This site scrapes other sites and generates a link to the article and the comments. It then forces you to save a note before you can see the comments. Obviously this won't stop people who don't want to be stopped. There is no validation on the notes, so you can simply click into a link, save a single letter and voila, you are good to get to the comments that we all sorely desire. However, I personally find that I rarely do that. I like reading an article and there have been a bunch of things I've tried out simply because pausing to write my thoughts let me slow down and process that this was something interesting. I think the act of writing things down is a way to force the processing of information. Even when I read articles, I rarely turned them over in my mind, I was just reading for the sake of reading. Now that I have to at least write a sentence down, it forces me to actively consume the content.
This site is deeply personal, both function and aesthetic are something that I may be the only one that likes but it works for me and hopefully it works for someone else. I don't comment or interact with comments usually so, for me just writing my notes is enough. If you are someone who likes to comment on posts, this probably won't be a good fit as the way I'm using iframes means that your sessions aren't being sent across.
There are some default sites that come set up already. I haven't written up how to add more sites, so just go into the profile page and go to sources. You can play around with it, and if you need help, please send me an e-mail! I'd be happy to help! nivethan|@|leftwrite.io (remove the | from the email).