Hacker News Reader

I concur with your distaste for the domain name (@prateek - no use garnering such animosity. Just drop the name and pick something else - desihacker.in is available. you might even get some good press.)

But having a local technology discussion group might not be all that useless - let me explain.

There are other hi-tech communities in India, similar to HotHardware or Extremetech which are hugely popular in the community (e.g. http://www.erodov.com/forums/gigabyte-ga-x58a-ud9-review-ln2...). So this is not something that is of unproven relevance.

India has a chicken and egg problem in terms of programming intellectual prowess. The community is driven primarily by that which can lay down your daily supper - Java/JSP/VB/ASP . By virtue of the existing tech leadership pool, most innovation is driven from the west. And it takes a long time before the community takes root in India.

<begin rant> I blame the community for it. For instance, it would make far greater sense for the Linux community to try and hold their top level conferences in India - which could very well be their biggest customer base (the west is lost to the fruit seller already). Did you know Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. sell laptops with Ubuntu/Freedos preinstalled in India (off the shelf) ? </end rant>

Point being, I think India does need a sunrise period for its technology community to be shepherded in. Hacker News is definitely too advanced in its expectation of the community for... say a fresh-behind-the-ears college student in India.

This community might also be too Yank in its vernacular. Yes, there are a lot of Indians around, but we are all comfortable with the vernacular, prefer it even. That is definitely, definitely not true for most Indians who might feel completely alienated (especially the younger ones)

For all the other Indians, torn between feelings of loyalty and betrayal, I encourage to search out and mentor the fledgling community back home - they need your help so that eventually they can come here and start flaming!

@sandgorgon.

Good Points all. A couple of minor points. My distaste is not so much about the name per se as the casualness of the ripoff. One email to the original site's owner (in this case PG) would have set things right one way or another before launching. Apparently this is being done now. Better late than never. pg will probably wave this through (or not) and that will be that. Then the "HNI" folks can focus on quality ;-)

As to the need for a community to "shepherd in" bright kids, it is an interesting idea but I am not so sure this is an answer to that need or even whether that need even exists in any deep fashion. (I speak as someone mentoring some ultra bright students working in Machine Learning). Something like Google Summer of Code might work much better. But, you maybe right. Maybe "shepherding" is what people need and perhaps a localized HN-lite site is what is needed. For some reason I am not too comfortable with the idea. I need to think about this.

Thank you for your thoughts. They made me (re)think.

I am on the fence with this one.

While I do agree that, Indian startup community has its own challenges and latest gossip from Angel world of Silicon Valley is of little interest to us (None of the Angels operating out of valley invest here, including YC) but if you leave technical and design problems those issues can be counted on fingers.

Then there is problem of getting traction and yes perhaps Indian entrepreneurs need separate forum for that. "Show HN: Blacklist/review autorickshaws using SMS", might be of little interest to global audience.

My point being, while technical or design discussions at HN will be always superior and there will be little benefit in repeating them on HNI, so clearly there is no need of separate forum as such for such things. What is left is, problems of startup community, there have been numerous efforts to solve that, if HNI succeeds in that; awesome. But at the end of day, HNI won't be a forum in the same spirit as HN (Just startup stuff, no need to call hackernews, which means a lot of different things).

I think it is a good effort. There are many India-specific issues that are not relevant to the whole of HN, even though many Indians may find it interesting.

Hey, you keep editing your post repeatedly. I posted a reply to your comment, and after a few minutes I saw that your post has been edited in a way that my reply to it was irrelevant. And then, it happened again. Kindly try to avoid this.

You can quote the parent post's context in your reply to keep a safe copy.

"Hey, you keep editing your post repeatedly."

Yeah that's how I write these things. I refine my writing a few times before I am satisfied.

Editing already posted content is what the edit button is for. I write, post, read it over, see that something didn't come out exactly as I wanted, rewrite that and so on.

This is a forum post, not a formal essay that I should get exactly right before I post, then to remain untouched forever. The edit facility is provided so people can edit their posted content and that is exactly how I use it.

As to your replies becoming irrelevant I have no hand in that. I don't read replies and then re-edit (though I can see how it may feel that way to you,especially if you dashed off a reply before I finish rewriting some sentence or the other). Frankly when I (re)write something the (ir)relevance of any unseen replies posted is the least of my concerns.

"Kindly try to avoid this."

Change the way I write to accommodate your preferences? Thank You for the suggestion but I decline ;-)

If it bothers you that much wait a quarter hour or so before you pen your reply. Or save the first version you see and quote it. If you can wait an hour, the post becomes locked and uneditable. Don't be so quick to reply if you want a guarantee of immutability and "relevance". Or just learn to live with the ephemerality of your replies. Or just don't reply to me. Whatever. (Feel free to downvote this if it wasn't the answer you were looking for ;-))

(fwiw I rewrote bits and pieces of this reply eight times in about four minutes,without ever checking for any replies)

"Discussion about programming/hacking/startups/other matters of intellectual interest are in general best done in a global context."

100% agree.

"This is an unpopular view point amongst certain folks here in India(and I fully expect to be downvoted ;-))"

Exactly I got down voted when i said "Its unnecessary"

Yes, it would've been better if they haven't copied/modeled after HN. And am still not convinced of the idea that only India specific content should be posted/allowed in "HN India".

Do something original. HNI folks, may be you are tying to do a TEDx copy?

"Imo, there isn't enough of a critical mass of India specific issues related to hacking/startups/programming etc sufficient to support a whole new community." - So true !!! I have been thinking about this very topic for the last month or so.