Lobsters was [launched](https://twitter.com/jcs/status/220334061418323968) on this day 5 years ago. 7600 users, 32,000 stories, and 89,000 comments later, thanks to everyone that has made it the engaging community that it is today.
Stories by jcs
Hi all,
After five years of running the site, I'm ready to pass it on to someone else. Due to the way it's hosted and because there are not enough built-in moderator tools to do everything through the web interface (like creating new tags and hats), it would need to be moved to a new server/VPS ...
There is now an [option](https://lobste.rs/settings) to show small user avatars next to their username on story lists and comments. Not terribly helpful but is nice for scanning a page of things looking for @pushcx's green icon.
There is also a new [option](https://lobste.rs/settings) to show a ...
On the [settings screen](https://lobste.rs/settings) is a [new](https://github.com/jcs/lobsters/commit/dbd84f1e0317adf7eb401106c586af3799f2c895) option to enroll in 2FA, using TOTP.
I went with TOTP because it's easy to setup and doesn't rely on any 3rd-party services, and works with a variety of...
I am avoiding doing real work today, so you will now see "save" links under each story, which makes a story go to your [saved stories list](/saved). I added this to be able to save things you want to read later and then maybe unsave them, to be separate from the list of [all the things you've upvot...
As requested, here is a 2016 recap like I did for [2015](https://lobste.rs/s/cy0oks/happy_new_year_lobsters).
In 2016, we gained 1,345 new users, up from 1,273 in 2015.
There were 9,686 stories submitted (way up from 6,859 in 2015),
with the most common tag again being [programming](/t/progr...
It's 2016 somewhere, so Happy New Year. Here's a look back at the arbitrarily-demarcated 2015 year on Lobsters:
In 2015, we gained 1,273 new users.
There were 6,859 stories submitted,
with the most common tag being [programming](/t/programming) (used on 1,382 stories).
The top 5 most fre...
Happy New Year, Lobsters.
I would like to start off this year by getting a lot of new users on the site, to provide some new viewpoints and get more discussion on the stories posted here.
I've heard from people that want to join the site that trying to find out who to ask for an invitation is ...
I had some "L" logo stickers made up a while back and was going to mail them out to users myself, but I never got around to it. The sticker vendor now has a marketplace thing where you can buy them yourself directly, so I figured I would offer them up here for anyone that wants one or ten. They ar...
I've just [implemented](https://github.com/jcs/lobsters/commit/73b8df5eb7d9cc0de318968e6474f6f7c59d7b72) a feature I've long wanted on many news aggregation sites: story merging.
Stories that are similar without enough new content (like general news sites all reporting on the same story) can now ...
There is now a new [hat request system](/hats/build_request) along with a [public index](/hats) of all hats, replacing the old [hat party](https://lobste.rs/s/j6q3to/hat_party) thread. Please use this to request new hats that moderators can sort through and approve or reject.
The internet needs more [hidden services](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/some-thoughts-hidden-services), and Lobsters is now directly accessible via [Tor](https://www.torproject.org/) at its official hidden service address:
[http://lobsters3ik6yqwj.onion](http://lobsters3ik6yqwj.onion)
*In t...
A new [feature](https://github.com/jcs/lobsters/issues/207) has been [committed](https://github.com/jcs/lobsters/commit/e940601a2f8bb21c6450130a2f09a22bd665475e) enabling users to make formal suggestions for changing story tags and titles. Hopefully this will eliminate the need for moderators to ha...
In one year since Lobsters launched:
- 1,030 [users](https://lobste.rs/u/) have been invited and signed up,
- 2,516 [stories](https://lobste.rs/newest) have been submitted,
- 2,706 [comments](https://lobste.rs/comments) have been posted, and
- 346 [commits](https://github.com/jcs/lobsters/comm...