[HN Gopher] Why do people leave comments on OpenBenches?
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Why do people leave comments on OpenBenches?
Author : sedboyz
Score : 213 points
Date : 2025-12-20 16:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (shkspr.mobi)
(TXT) w3m dump (shkspr.mobi)
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| Great project, feels like the old web. I'm inspired to take a
| walk to my local park and add the memorial benches
| sjsmith89 wrote:
| I see my area is lacking dispite having many memorial benches.
| Unfortunately some are in poor condition. I will try my best to
| capture and record them. Great project. Will encourage others.
| arjie wrote:
| Marvelous stuff. Appreciate the tips on the technologies used to
| stay abreast of the new regulations. I always thought it was a
| pity we were going to start losing comments and am glad to see
| that it's still feasible to keep them.
| BeetleB wrote:
| For almost 20 years, I've wanted to build a site where users can
| upload photos of informational boards/plaques along the road
| (e.g. on highways), along with photos of the actual item the
| board was talking about. The idea was that you could browse a
| map, and see all the ones along the route you were thinking of
| traveling, and decide which spots were worth stopping at.
|
| In those days there were no cell phones, and I didn't know much
| web development. Now, with GPS embedded into photos, this is
| perhaps a really easy site to build.
|
| But I don't want to deal with user moderation. And I don't want
| the burden of continual maintenance.
|
| I was also concerned that a side effect would be really nice, not
| frequently visited spots will suddenly overflow with tourists. A
| much tougher problem to crack.
|
| I don't think I'll ever get around to it. Someone convince me
| otherwise. Or better yet, build it for me. :-)
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > The idea was that you could browse a map, and see all the
| ones along the route you were thinking of traveling, and decide
| which spots were worth stopping at.
|
| Strava has something like this, not specifically for
| informational boards/plaques. People with public profiles can
| have their uploaded photos of (usually) trail markers, plaques,
| rickety bridges/stairs/rocks, big trees etc added to a
| community map so others can see whats on a trail or route they
| want to walk/run.
|
| I take the exact photos you are talking about and have them
| uploaded to my trail activities -- though I keep my profile
| private, more of a historical record for myself. I've wondered
| if others were into taking/saving photos of all the ones they
| come across. I see others reading and moving on or taking a
| selfie, but am usually the only one trying to get photos of the
| board/plaque and the objects it was pointing out
| edent wrote:
| You are welcome to fork our code for OpenBenches
|
| https://github.com/openbenches/openbenches.org/
|
| It is fairly standard PHP + MySQL.
|
| We use Auth0 for authentication - people editing have to use a
| social network to log in. That significantly reduces (but
| doesn't eliminate) the need for moderation.
|
| As for maintenance - once in a while dependabot will say a PHP
| library is out of date and I'll run the update.
|
| Please do launch your project; it sounds like fun
| POBIX wrote:
| This is really beautiful. One of the most moving things I've seen
| in weeks. The website and the comments and just the idea of
| memorial benches.
|
| I'm very surprised it was able to get this much traction despite
| being launched only 8 years ago, long after the heyday of these
| sort of sites. How'd you do it?
| edent wrote:
| Built it and they will come.
|
| OK, it was a mixture of things. I told my friends about it and
| they were sufficiently nerdy to try it out.
|
| I responded to early feedback - specifically about creating a
| leaderboard. Originally it was all anonymous but people wanted
| to see how well they'd done.
|
| My wife and I gave an interview to a local BBC radio station
| which gave it a little bump. Similarly, when it is mentioned on
| reddit and other sites we pop up and talk about it.
|
| It was also picked up by a couple of academic papers, which
| gave it a bit of credibility. As did our recent integration
| with OpenStreetMap.
|
| There's a far amount of schema.org metadata which probably
| helps with SEO.
|
| But, other than that, who knows? I've had plenty of projects
| which didn't do as well. Sometimes the Web rewards nice things.
| jmkb wrote:
| Thanks for building and maintaining this lovely project.
|
| I'm an OSM mapper & enjoy linking mapped benches to their
| profiles on OpenBenches. It gets hairy, though, when a single
| bench features multiple memorial plaques. Wonder if you'd
| consider revising your data model to permit multiple
| inscriptions per bench?
| edent wrote:
| Open an issue on GitHub and we can discuss it.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Thought this was going to lead to something about a major
| annoyance or weird commenters but pleasantly surprised at the
| list of impacts, heartfelt, emotive, human experiences connecting
| community from the physical to the virtual (to the otherworldly
| no doubt).
|
| There are a lot of _trees_ with similar sort of sponsorships and
| commemorations... wonder if a spin off would be something like
| opentreebutes.org ?
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Yeah, I likewise thought this was going to be about people
| being brutally unpleasant - commenting to laugh at the dead, to
| pour scorn on their families, that sort of thing.
|
| I am jaded. Then again I come from a family where people go to
| funerals to gloat and start fights.
| whatevermom4 wrote:
| Is there a way to reprogram yourself when having a family
| like this?
| edent wrote:
| Please build it! There are lots of lovely tree memorials which
| should also be preserved.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| I was reading over a comment thread on songfacts.com a few days
| ago and thought to myself "this is what the internet was supposed
| to be". People from all over the world connecting to discuss
| their favorite music, across time and space, without any
| upvoting, downvoting, likes, followers, or other systems to game
| for popularity.
|
| Without upvotes/likes/etc. as a "quality filter", you tend to
| read more comments written in broken English with poor grammar
| and so forth. I consider that an acceptable price to pay, in
| exchange for no viral memes, ragebaiting, etc.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Up in the San Gabriel mountains in Southern California, just off
| of a faint use trail above Sierra Madre, someone installed a
| memorial bench for their child who died shortly after birth.
| Stumbling on it on a hike, I was overcome with emotion thinking
| of the grief those parents must have felt, and how it spurred
| them into the monumental effort of hiking the bench all the way
| up there and planting it in the ground. I'm normally a staunch
| advocate of the wilderness principle of Leave No Trace, but I
| didn't even think about it once whilst seated on that bench.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I really assumed this was going to be about an automated
| benchmark suite...
| sph wrote:
| Beautiful post. Nothing confirms the Dead Internet Theory better
| than the surprise at seeing genuine human interaction on the net.
|
| We share the desperate need to connect with each other, no matter
| how arduous it has become to.
|
| I will expect with sadness the day that the author complains
| about bot spam on his benches website.
| symbogra wrote:
| I will try to record any that I spot in my travels
| edent wrote:
| Thank you!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| One early vacation morning my wife and I took our kids to a
| playground to adjust their pre-museum energy levels. It was quiet
| and sunny with dew still on the grass. The kids ran carefree
| through the playground, making their own adventures while I
| settled on a nearby bench. I noticed the bench had one of those
| memorial plaques for a man named Everett:
|
| https://ibb.co/GQsk7Dqk
|
| The power of the memorial that morning had me daydreaming what it
| would be like to be a grandpa watching my grandkids running
| around the playground. That's where I want to be immortalized:
| not in a lonely cemetery but on a warm park bench, relaxing and
| enjoying the best things about life.
|
| My youngest migrated his play to the swing set and called me over
| for help. I loaded him in and began pushing while thinking of old
| Everett, maybe pushing his own grandson, maybe in this very
| swing.
|
| And then I noticed what was written just above him:
|
| https://ibb.co/SwLJQgD4
|
| In a breath my mind corrected the error in my daydreams and a
| freight train punched through my gut, leaving me unable to
| breathe. My heart sunk and fell out the bottom of me as I
| struggled to keep pushing my son. I'd later learn that my son, in
| that moment, was older than Evvy would ever get to be. It's been
| years and I still wrestle with this memory every time my kids
| play on a swing set.
| KomoD wrote:
| Interesting site, will definitely add a few that are in my city!
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