Making Substack Better

Ideas on how Substack could be improved

I’ve been using Substack for about 2 months now, which is enough time for me to have opinions on how it could be improved. So here goes…

Markdown

Substack should allow content to be edited using Markdown. Since most computer screens are landscape-oriented, one way to do this would be to split the screen vertically: on the left display the markdown source, and on the right display what the page will look like when rendered.

In particular I like the HTML <mark> tag which makes text appear on a yellow background like it’s been highlighted with a marker pen; since Markdown allows embedded HTML, if Substack did Markdown I would be able to add the mark tag to phrases I want to emphasize. I miss not having this feature in Substack.

Spellchecker

Adding a spellcheck makes it easier to catch typos. For bonus points the spellchecker should allow Substack writers to add new words so that jargon unfamiliar to it isn’t shown as a typo.

Notifications

If I’m logged in to Substack and someone replied to one of my comments, Substack should notify me on the website. Reddit does this using a mail icon that goes orange when you have replies.

I should also be notified when any of the Substacks I subscribe to have new posts or threads.

Blogroll

I’d like to add a blogroll to my substack. Substack are already doing this for Astral Codex Ten and intend to roll it out for all Substacks. So that’s a win!

RSS Reader

If I have a blogroll, I presumably read the blogs in it. So it would be nice to have notifications of new posts in blogs I read, i.e. to have an RSS reader similar to The Old Reader.

While researching this post I find that Substack have an RSS reader in beta. Go Substack! Here is what their RSS reader looks like:

Recommendations:

• My list of feeds only covers 1/3rd of the left pane. It should cover all the pane in order to display more feeds without having to scroll.

• There’s a lot of unused screen estate at the right of the page. The Inbox, Discover, Add RSS Feed and Write on Substack buttons could be moved there, making room for more feeds.

• In my list of feeds it shows a P-in-purple-circle as my icon. That’s not my icon! It knows the correct one (a saltire-with-EU-stars), because it displays it at the top left of the page. I’ve no idea where the P-in-purple-circle came from.

• When I click a feed in my blogroll it doesn’t display it in the middle part of the page as I was expecting and as it should. Instead it displays it in a new tab. If Substack wants links to open in a new tab maybe they could display an external link icon to the right of the blog title, and you click on it to display the blog in a new tab.

More control over appearance

The existing theme settings are good, but would be better if there was a larger choice of fonts, and people were able to specify font sizes and colours in more detail. For example I might want body text to be black but headings to be dark blue.

This could be implemented by allowing Substack owners to have optional CSS. maybe even allow Substack readers to have their own optional CSS, so they can read posts the way they like and not how the writer wanted. On the subject of control over appearance for Substack readers, I would also like the ability to remove sticky headers when I am reading Substack, as I find them annoying.

If a post includes code, it should include code highlighting by default as this makes code easier to read and so enhances utility for Substacks about programming. This fits in with my other suggestion of allowing posts to be written in Markdown because some versions of Markdown allow code language to be stated, e.g.:

```html
<!-- this is html -->
<h1>In The Beginning</h1>
<p>It was a stormy evening...</p>
```

If a post includes headings, there should be an option for an automatically-generated table of contents at the top of the post. In Python-Markdown this is done using:

[TOC]

While writing the previous paragraph, I found out that you can only have monospaced text in its own paragraph. This should be rectified: I want to be asble to have monospaced text inside a paragraph. Again, this would be particularly useful for programming Substacks.

I don’t want Substack to go over the top on customisation, however. Looking at Wordpress’s themes they are overcomplicated and hard to set up. Substack should offer the same basic structure to everyone, allowing CSS to change fonts, colours, sizes, etc but not overall page layout.

Content Guidelines

Substack’s Content Guidelines are too vague. Erotica is allowed but porn isn’t:

Nudity, porn, erotica

We don’t allow porn or sexually exploitative content. We allow artistic expressions of nudity and erotica on Substack, but we may hide it from Substack’s discovery features, including search and Substack.com. 

What’s the difference between porn and erotica? I am reminded of Yes Minister, when Bernard Woolley says:

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it?
I have an independent mind, You are eccentric, He is round the twist.

In this case, it’s conjugated:

I like erotica. You like porn. He is a pervert.

Recommendation: There is no substantive difference between porn and erotica. Substack should get off the fence, and either allow porn/erotica or not. I’m not fussed either way, but be clear.

Then we come to Substack’s “hate” guidelines:

Hate 

Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that call for violence, exclusion, or segregation based on protected classes. Offending behavior includes serious attacks on people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or medical condition.

The first sentence doesn’t state what the protected classes are. It can, however be charitably assumed they intend the list in the 2nd sentence. But this covers a very broad set of behaviour, more broad than I expect Substack intend. For example:

• States exclude foreigners from their countries. Few if any have a policy of completely open borders. Is this hateful? I don’t think it is any more hateful than not allowing random strangers to walk into your house.

• States run schools. Typically a school will be for people of a particular age, for example 7-11, and if you’re not in that age range you’re excluded. Is this hateful? I don’t think so.

• An organisation runs a women’s refuge. Men are excluded. This therefore excludes people based on a protected category.

• A hospital wants to segregate patients with an infectious disease away from other patients and especially away from patients with a compromised immune system. Most people would characterise this as “sensible" not “hateful”.

The protected classes are also problematic. Consider religion. Should this be protected? Some reasons why not:

• There are numerous examples of religions, in their doctrines or communities, being hateful towards or excluding/segregating people belonging to all the other categories listed. Given that the intent of the policy is to reduce hate/exclusion/segregation, why protect belief systems that promote those things?

• The policy protects religions but not non-religious belief systems. Why should a belief that’s based in the supernatural be protected, but an otherwise similar belief without supernatural overtones not be? That’s anti-rational and, since the difference between humans and other animals is the capacity for rational thought, anti-human.

• The policy shows Substack to be hypocrites. Consider a religious organisation that wants to set up a Substack to promote its religious doctrines. The religion is an Abrahamic one and as such excludes/segregates people on the basis of one or more of: ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability. So the religous organisation is prevented from having a Substack, or if it does have one, must conceal its doctrines. So Substack’s policy of not allowing exclusion based on religion is causing Substack to exclude people based on religion.

“Medical condition” is also problematic. Antisocial Personality Disorder is a medical condition (it’s in the DSM-5) but most people would regard it as sensible to want to exclude, or even hate, psychopaths.

“National origin” appears to protect someone’s nationality at birth but not any subsequent nationality they hold, and could be replaced by the shorter “nationality”.

Based on these I recommend Substack change this policy to something like:

Hate 

Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that call for violence against people based on these protected categories: race, ethnicity, nationality, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability.

Allow Storing Files

If I include an image in a Substack post, a local copy of the image is created on Substack’s website. This means if the original image goes down, it is still there.

But imagine if I want to comment on a PDF document. I can link to it, sure, but at some point in the future that link might fail and people who read my article several years from now won’t be able to see it. So as part of my Substack account I’d like to have a repository where I can save files (such as PDFs) in order to create a local copy of them that will not go down as long as my Substack is up.

Make the site more navigable

I find it hard to navigate the site sometimes. For example, if I’m not logged in and I go to https://substack.com , it shows me the landing page:

which is all well and good.

But if I am logged in and I go to the same URL, it instead takes me to the Reader at https://reader.substack.com/inbox . This is bad! If I wanted to go to the Reader, I would use that URL, which I have in my bookmarks.

In general I find it hard to navigate to Substack’s own pages from my Substack; maybe every Substack should have a Substack logo somewhere at the top left of the page which takes you to the Substack home page.

I even find it had to navigater my own Substack. If I go to pontifex.substack.com when I’m not logged in, I get a landing page:

OK, all well and good. But if I am logged in I can’t see or get to that pager (or at least, I don’t know how). I should be able to, so I can see how my landing page looks to others.

Furthermore, if I click on the “Let me read it first >” link, I get this list of articles:

The problem with this is they are both the same URL. And there’s no way for me to get back to, or bookmark, the landing page. This gives me an eerie and disconcerting feeling that I’m not in control.

Instead, Substack should use two different URLs, perhaps:

• sitename.substack.com/landing

• sitename.substack.com/links

Show full dates

Have a look at this article header from the Substack blog:

It’s dated “Mar 12”. I know that means the 12th of March 2021, from context. But what if I google on a search term and it takes me to an article that says it was written on “Mar 12”. I do not, in the general case, know what year it was written. It could be 2021 or it could be 2011 for all I know. Since some information is time-dependent this could be important. Even if I am aware that on Substack old articles do show the year (in the format “Mar 12, 2020”), not everyone will be.

Recommendation: show the date for all articles. The format “2021-Mar-12” is best, because it consistently goes from largest to smallest time units.

Remove sticky headers

Articles have sticky headers, that appear when you scroll upwards. Remove them please, I find them annoying. I know I’m not the only person who finds sticky headers annoying, because people have made tools to kill them:

“But”, I hear you ask, “how will people navigate the website witrhout them?” That’s a good question. The answer is there’s lots of unused screen estate to the left and right of the articles, so use that.

Some people like sticky headers, so you could always make them optional and allow each user to choose their own preference.

Overall

I like Substack and I want to see it improve. I see it is an anti-Twitter: while Twitter is optimised for quick dopamine hits and the Toxoplasma of Rage, Substack is optimising for longer posts and deep understanding.

Do you have any comments on Substack, or functionality you’d like to see added? Write them in the comments below.

History

2021-Mar-15: added sections “Show full dates” and “Make the site more navigable”. On “More control over appearance” added suggestions for a table of contents and allowing monospaced text within a paragraph.

2021-Mar-17: added “Remove sticky headers” section