Apply HN: Hostable, Reskinnable, Domainable, Searchable, Forum Software | Hacker News Reader

Apply HN: Hostable, Reskinnable, Domainable, Searchable, Forum Software

3 pointsandy_ppp5 comments

So while hacker news is used in very flexible ways (like this!) and the community is amazing I'm really really exhausted with how badly the actual software used to host it works.

I see a lot of opportunity around a piece of forum software integrated into a piece of crowd funding software. Wait, what? How the hell would this work?

So imagine we go completely meta and start thinking about how hacker news is being used today, what do we need:

1) Custom Tagging of thread titles (Apply HN, Show HN, customisable via the setup).

2) Works on mobile

3) Skinnable

4) Hosted/Can create your own DNS/Community/Rules/etc.

5) Conclusion mode - was there anything suggested/tagged as a conclusion?

6) Conclusion ordering mode - call for actions - you can turn you comment into an action point (maybe with a suggested cost against it).

7) Given a set of conclusion/actions a crowdfunding campaign could be started. We could for example all cough up to hire a lawyer to start a class action lawsuit or pay someone in our local area to organise with the local authority to fix a part of our area or we could get together and build a crazy piece of installation art.

8) Grouping of threads by tag and different tag types.

9) Not sure about money yet but I guess you could take a fee from any successful crowd funding.

10) Directory of Volunteer/Recommended Helpers/Past history of having done stuff!

11) Think about it like github issues for the real world!

12) Successful campaigns running through tools like this and a playbook for managing them.

13) Multiple post admins who have to agree/action stuff.

Name suggestions welcome, I have to go to bed now so please vote, sorry for the lack of further discussion! I will be on it tomorrow!

Hey Andy, when I went shopping for forum software last year I discovered Discourse. Perhaps you could talk about how your forum would be better that it?

Ouch! $100 per month minimum plan... for me to get started building my replacement for local government that is a high barrier to entry. I suppose at least I can host it myself though, it is very impressive software.

I guess what I want is to take over all the branches of the government and replace them with forum software. But not the forum software we have seen today, an as yet unrealised possibility of what forum software could be!

So thus far having looked at Discourse how does it implement my ideas:

1) Nope, tagging in the HN style doesn't exists AFAIK.

2) Yes, mobile

3) Yes, Skinnable

4) Hosted/Can create your own DNS/Community/Rules/etc

5, 6, 7) It seems more focused on finding solutions to specific problems (I'm using the twitter API does it do X) rather than having a broad discussion and them being able to select answers from that discussion to refine into a crowd sourcing campaign.

8) Grouping of threads by tag and different tag types.

9) Discourse have a business model that's pretty sound. Charge for hosting.

10) Directory of useful people on each forum who can be paid to do stuff...

11) How are we discussing these YC programs - I think there is a lot of room for improvement being able to tag posts to the top of the thread and give a TLDR of the salient points in a thread.

Maybe people can summarise questions and break things down into pieces that can be answered in a more coherent package.

If deemed suitable by the community the thread could then be acted on through a crowd sourcing campaign.

Imagine if we were to organise society with a piece of forum software how would it look and what would people get in return for helping their community - probably more voting rights and better ability to change things/make a difference.

You might consider implementing the features you seek as a plugin to discourse. As for the hosting expenses, there are 3rd party services that will host it for you.

To get started with an idea like this, you really need a specific use case or customer who wants something. Then you build it for them. You've dumped a big list of features, but at the early stage it's important to only work on the ones which actually create value for a specific user or use case. Do your customer development first. This is a really ambitious project so paring it down is probably your best bet.

I do think "works on mobile" is a really great thing, few forums work well on mobile and it's definitely the future :)

Hey Andy,

Interesting, I'm working in a similar area (but not in crowd funding space) - would love to chat on some of the things you've mentioned in regards to forum software. Do you have a contact point I can reach out to? (me - hello at hellobox.co)

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