About Yapern

Yapern is an attempt to build a better Reddit, in the open. It starts with a familiar idea: communities around shared interests, posts worth reading, and conversations you can come back to.

A good forum makes room for a question that needs a careful answer, a project someone wants to share, or a niche interest that’s hard to explain to anyone else. We want Yapern to be a useful home for those conversations.

What we want to improve

“Better” has to mean something in everyday use. For us, that means pages that load quickly, posts that are easy to read and share, and controls that help you take part without getting in the way. Reading a thread on your phone should feel straightforward.

Communities here are called sub-yaps. The goal is to give each one room to develop its own character, with clear rules and useful tools for the people who look after it. Moderation and trust take work, and building those tools is part of the project.

Why open source

A community puts time and knowledge into the place where it gathers. We think people should be able to understand how that place works and have a way to improve it.

Yapern’s web source code is on GitHub, under the GNU General Public License v3. You can read it, report a problem, suggest a change, contribute a fix, or adapt it under the license’s terms. Open source makes those contributions possible; earning people’s trust still depends on what we build and how we run it.

Where things stand

Yapern is early. You can create an account, start a sub-yap, publish a post, and reply to a conversation. Shared voting and broader moderation tools are still work ahead. The interactive sample on the homepage is a preview, and its votes and saves stay in that page.

Calling this an attempt at a better Reddit describes the direction we’re working toward. There are plenty of details to get right, and using the site will tell us more than a feature list can.

Get involved

Read the latest conversations, create an account, or open an issue on GitHub. A clear bug report, a suggestion based on using the site, or a thoughtful reply all help. We also write about the work on the Yapern blog.