New Function: Add Sources to Responses
We've evolved the UI to make adding sources a cinch
If you've been on Cent for more than a few weeks a few things should be clear: Cent has an amazing user base, responses are typically very thoughtful, and good design is highly valued.
I asked Cent’s CEO / designer Max Brody what his design philosophy behind this update was:
Good design should evolve with how people use things. We’ve seen that users are naturally retrieving information for their responses elsewhere on the internet, and that’s totally fine. Curation is just as important as creation on our platform. The problem is they aren’t crediting the sources where they get the information. I see this as a design problem. There hasn’t been an easy way to cite references, so people haven’t.
It’s similar to Napster and iTunes. People didn’t have an easy way to legally download single songs, so they downloaded them illegally. But when the UI for getting single songs evolved to meet their desire (in the form of the iTunes store), they started following the rules.
We want our UI to always align with and augment natural behavior, not fight it.
On Cent we want our design - for everything - to speak for itself. But, as the age old adage goes, “Design is hard, and good design is really hard.” So, there may still be a lot of spots on the site where the design is not as clear or intuitive as it could be. We know that, and we're working on them.
One of those areas that we've been working on is 'Sources' or citations for responses.
Sources aren't needed for most responses on Cent. Many thoughtful original responses have helped make Cent the great place it is today. That said, not all good responses need to be original. Sometimes there is more value in providing (or curating) content from elsewhere on the internet. That is absolutely ok. However, those types of responses need to be cited.
Although we've tried to convey that same exact message to users as much as we can in the bounty posts themselves and in our 'Help' section, the Cent UI has not helped support that message at all.
That's why we are introducing an updated UI in the response view to make it as easy as possible for Centians to add any sources they’ve used in their responses.

Now Centians will be able to easily enter 1 to n sources, and they will appear at the bottom of individual responses in a cleanly organized list.
To pull back the curtains a little on a related update that we're targeting, in the near future we see users being able to easily attach sources in endnote form. So, for responses that require deeper research, users will be able to add sources much the same way they can add hyperlinks, the only difference being that instead of a hyperlink appearing, a superscript number will be created instead.
As a closing request to all Centians, I'd just like to ask everyone to continue sending us your suggestions and letting us know your pain points! All of your feedback really matters and it serves as the guiding light for our regular updates.
More Information
- Website: https://beta.cent.co
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/cent
- Cent Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/cent

