A topic silo encourages people to behave in ways that might help them reach the top of the silo. Getting to the top is expedited by pushing other people down. Even worse, it is expedited by driving out expertise.
The dynamics of HN prevent that. Topics so broad that being way outside your domain is the normal state of encountering an HN topic for everyone. Nobody has a well informed opinion about most of the items on the front page...most people don't even care about more than a handful of them even when there is a single story dominating it.
Secondly, there is no way to get to the top of HN. While karma adds up, HN is a constellation not a heap. The center is YC itself with rings of founders in the closest orbit around its mass.
Karma itself only puts you in the Oort cloud.
I don't find that to be true for certain topics:
* unions and unionization (apparently 9 out of 10 HN uncles agree unions are bad news for a mountain of uncles' evidence)
* current state of research in the social sciences (you have to wade through inescapable trolls who wish to throw out entire fields of research because they once read an eviscerating blog by an angry grad student regarding p-hacking)
* geopolitical significance of Wikileaks since its inception (did you know humans can lie by omission? You did? Anyway, let HN concern troll you about it in the form of copy-pasta bots once roughly every full moon.)
* cost benefit analyses of Electron (HN almost seems to have made a sport out of overestimating the cost of memory and hard disk space in the year 2021)
* veracity of traditional news media (like playing duck-duck-goose except the goose is some poster quoting the "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" cocktail story in an attempt to do an end run around reading any of the books written by experts on that topic)
* how to absolutely position HTML text over the exact same position as SVG text. (That was my own Stackoverflow holy grail quest, but I'd be willing to bet no one will reply on this thread with the right answer.)
I'd love to know what other topics people find here that are typically filled with garbage.
When put in "unions" into HN Search and look at the recent comments (excluding things like SQL and credit unions), opinion seems split, with a mild tilt in the pro-union direction. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=true&que...
If there was actual willingness for these journals to publish rigorous papers where bad statistics are rejected, maybe people would have more trust (and not have fun of the "science" often found in the papers)
Well, for me, the subjects I know the most about, like (some aspects of) music, philosophy, chess. Full of people who know nothing about the subject misinforming others.
I am also finding myself tempted to do exactly this with regards to the graphic novel I drew a few years back, just to see how badly it performs.
Sharing art or music itself rarely does this, but I remember recently seeing an acid house generator, and another had a constellation of electronic music samples along a long page.
love this website & audience but am doing work in the “building copyleft storytelling” space - a community of which does not yet seem to exist
but wait a sec - what “building copyleft storytelling” even mean except for sounding like some make believe fantasy thing?
by vision rn it’s something like coding but with respect to allowing a new community of creators to grow / develop via effectively “using” (fan-fiction-ing”) a copyleft creators work for new & original creation of
- story
- character
- plot
available for anyone to create w & sell commercial on the basis that they likewise license their work as copyleft Creative Commons CC BY-SA & link-to/credit original source work
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
i.e
this week am actually releasing signature characters from 3 vol of my free 2 read copyright short story series as copyleft / Creative Commons (CCBYSA) “copyleft character personas” anyone can create w/ (w license & link to credit source)
- NFT art (imagine a cryptopunk with a backstory)
- new orginal story ft copyleft character
- develop copyleft world build
will this be a use-case for crypto ecosystem? i.e ETH for Art/Character/Copyleft world-building?
if no, then what about when considering the “attention-economy”?
if curious about, short story series can be found here - https://blondyn.com
& almost daily superstrings here: http://superstrings.substack.com
for the record, if one vote can count, i do not mean this reply to come off as a shameless “post-selfie” but a legitimate “idea-pitch” from a HN regular of about 5 yrs who is “a writer” that is having difficulty finding an audience which == real bad kinda (sweat-drop + smile emoji goes here;)
also real bad is having zero folk / friends to talk about such an idea with
if this post still makes peeps mad just know just saw this link & the Cheshire post reply on “Art & Music” & imagined “Storytelling” could maybe fit in there as a neat 3rd thus thought to make like Wonderland /share something that ought at a minimum count as curious while simultaneously in quest to be mindful
also if such a copyleft storytelling community does exist pls share thx
We could have an interesting conversation since we've been working on very similar things.
edit: email and socials are in my profile
I don’t think HN will ever be overrun by original artworks. Partly because like most things on the internet most original artwork trends a bit forced. Mainly because nothing dominates HN. Not even Lisp.
It's a problem validation platform[1] called needgap. Problems are the first class citizens submitted as posts. Startup ideas, MVP, Products to solve the problems goes into comments.
I modeled it after HN for the reasons mentioned by OP and I wanted it to minimal design wise for reasons made clear below. I built it on top of Kenny Grant's golangnews.com project.
It's usually the Entrepreneurs who create posts for validating a problem/need-gap. They and other entrepreneurs comment about solutions or their own product. Consumers who are searching for a solution for their problem visit the respective needgap thread, Check out the products and sometimes make a comment.
Insights like number of people visiting a problem, top 3 countries (week/month) and how many will pay for that startup idea in the comment are available to subscribers($5 USD).
> to the top is expedited by pushing other people down
> it is expedited by driving out expertise
Voting is just for platform sanctity at needgap and doesn't add much value to the validation(Views from search, Comments are more important). Further, voting rights(karma) can be gained only by commenting and Downvotes burn a karma. Votes are shown only to the owner.
> Nobody has a well informed opinion about most of the items on the front page
That's why needgap doesn't rely upon regular user's subject matter expertise but that occasional (often one-time) visitor's expertise about knowing about a problem (or) knowing how to solve that problem.
Validation happens through those who might actually need our product and not by a bunch of people in a closed platform like most 'pay for a startup idea' type platforms. Hence minimalism of HN matters, email is optional like HN. Someone who comes to needgap from Google Search doesn't even need to know what needgap is.
> there is no way to get to the top of HN
Lifetime of posts (problems) is very long at needgap, 2 year old problem still get solutions as the need for solution exists as long as need-gap exists.
But since number of problems/day is low when compared to HN almost all genuine problems(i.e. problem != startup idea) gets its way to home page and many stay there for several months.
There are about 3500 registered users, almost as many visit needgap every single day organically.
It reminds me of HN in the sense that it is very well moderated - it’s rare to see anyone trying to cause trouble and they get shut down quickly if they do - and most of the people seem smart and friendly. There’s quite a lot of good content (if you’re interested in music production, of course!) - it’s the only other forum type thing I use really.
It doesn’t have the same layout as HN as it uses Discourse (which is more like a traditional forum layout, but very nicely done IMO).
In theory it feels like Reddit should be the obvious answer here but it just doesn’t work for me. Too much crappy meme/joke content and/or loads of empty threads on more specialised topics. Also not a fan of the UI.
For my region and all German speakers a (the?) relevant site is https://www.kaffee-netz.de/
It is pretty active and has a lot of topics around coffee and coffee making technologies and techniques. It's definitely on a similar level to what OP was asking, I had to think of it immediately.
I don't think there are going to be very many places like HackerNews. "Hackers" as a subculture are bolstered by the fact that Internet based modes of communication and work (not just forums but also things like Github) are seen as interesting and productive. Plus the people capable designing such a forum are likely to be software people; it's a bit more difficult for a skilled mechanical engineer to quickly set up a forum. So it's no surprise that many of the forums are software/"hacker" oriented (e.g. Blind, Lobste.rs, HN). Any forum built by software engineers for other people seems doomed to go the way of Reddit rather than the way of HN.
However, I'll give a shoutout for a great community forum that I've participated in, and that's ChiefDelphi. But that's super niche (it's focused around the high school FIRST robotics competition).
The flat (non-threaded) forums have their place. For low traffic, low engagement blog comments feedback stuff.
HN does page big threads, which isn't too bad. I'm immensely grateful HN doesn't do any silly AJAX style background, progressive loading of content.
Actually scratch that, it looks like ALL the posts are self-promotion.
They attract amateurs.
Amateurs generally repel expertise.
And experts are already busy doing the thing their expert at...serving clients.
To put it another way, working architects and designers don't have much if any upside from arguing with do-it-yourselfers, people who have only heard of FLW, and the general public which think of commercial construction as just like their house only more so.
HN is the best I've found, but is far from my goal. I found one forum that's higher quality, IMHO, but it's for a specific, narrow hobby.
forum.language-learners.org/
You won't find much discussion there (but feel free to start some). Basically, you can submit whatever you find interesting.
You want more people to want to use your favorite niche forum. But every niche forum that's gotten popular has been ruined.
Reddit has a few great subreddits. They aren't unpopular, but I also prefer not to market them. Let the people who really want it search for it, I guess.
Really? I'm not sure I agree with this. I feel like if the topic itself is niche or requires some baseline level of competency to contribute, then it actually resists this "crapification" because your average troll just doesn't have enough content/info to work with. It's the broader, general interest topics, usually that have some intersection with politics, that always go to shit.
I mean, I see this on HN itself, where the broad-topic posts often end up in a shit show (though thanks to dang the shit-level is kept under control), while the posts about specific technologies are usually pretty on point.
My commentary was on niche community that cover topics of general interest to people. (Think Anandtech, Some meme subreddit or hot-technical areas like r/machinelearning or r/cscareerquestions)
One would expect all of these former subcultures turned cultures to be entirely populated by sociopaths and mops giving nothing of quality back to the community, and for the geeks to have long fled the stables, but (to use an example) the people playing D&D today are just as passionate and creative as the people playing it in the 70s and 80s were.
What the article describes is a tendency, it happens, but it's not an axiom. In my experience, gatekeepers paranoid about maintaining their status and ego do far more harm than "muggles" learning about it.
For example, investment subreddits are generally very bad, yet the Berkshire Hathaway subreddit (r/brkb) is able to keep the rot out without becoming an echo chamber:
https://old.reddit.com/r/brkb/
This subreddit has literally dozens of value investor moderators, and the bubbles (cryptocurrency/ARK/Musk) are forcibly excluded.
The result is a forum where Buffett's principles of intrinsic value (discounted cash flows) and moats, etc., are explored for Berkshire and the many connected companies (e.g., Verizon).
Read the live chat history to see.
A sweet spot is a place where there are enough people to have long discussions but each person is deeply invested in the health of the forum itself.
My point was more about the difficulty in preserving the quality as quantity goes up. If you keep the quantity really low, then sure, you can enforce quality. But, then it feels pointless because there simply aren't enough conversations to engage in.
My favorite subreddit has thousands on comments on the weekly thread, yet I can realize familiar names, have deep conversations while the total sub count stays around 10k. Incredibly strict moderation helps (thanks dang), but it is a thankless job.
Not niche, but it's very minimal with no JS and has nested comments.
Reddit's new direction in recent years has been really painful. There's so many great niche communities there that practically don't exist elsewhere on the Internet. Unfortunately, if/when they get rid of old Reddit and the API for third party apps, I'll probably drop Reddit entirely.
[0] Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re... Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
There are many wonderful and incredibly in-depth communities on Reddit. They only get that way with substantial investment by passionate volunteers who spend the time to moderate, create on-topic original content, and cultivate a community. Many of these bemoan when they appear on the front page because of the sort of attention it attracts.
Yet the direction that Reddit is going with its design and new features is all about optimizing drive-by clicks and shallow engagements. I understand why. That's more ad impressions, and it's more revenue. But it makes the site generally insufferable, and I suspect, reduces the quality of user-produced content.
And on the subject of content, that is what draws the eyeballs, what produces the ad clicks, what drives the revenue. Am I crazy to think that there is a complex, nuanced ethical relationship between those profiting from the content and those producing it? Providing a place to put the content has value, little point in creating content if you have nowhere to put it. But creating content also has value, little point in creating a platform for content if there is no content to put there.
You can see this play out in another format on Youtube (which for a platform is hell on earth as far as I am concerned, even if amazing content can flourish there). At least they are able to share revenue with the content creators, and many folks make a living creating content.
I don't begrudge Reddit for seeking revenue. I want them to not just sustain, but to flourish. And I have no idea how revenue sharing would work in the forum medium. And to be honest, I don't really care to get paid for the words I write there, or the other OC I share. I just want to know what the balance is going to lead to. I have no agency over my content.
So here's a similar question -- as they continue to push the slider further in the direction of more ads and more dark patterns, I can't help but ask, how much is enough? Reddit users are both producers and consumers. I started using Reddit well over a decade ago, and I have a decade's worth of content I have given them. Meanwhile, I agreed to give my eyeballs to some ads, where the word some has a hazy quantification. I get the sense that some number of ads value is being ratcheted up. And I never agreed to that. We never bargained. I can't get my eyeball time back. But I want my content back. The content that Reddit is getting revenue from.
I have the same question for paid online newspapers. I'm more than happy to pay real fiat money from my credit card or bank account for the news. But these news sites, beyond their paywalls, still show ads. Tomorrow, will they show twice as many ads? Maybe. We never negotiated this. I never saw ads mentioned in the rate card. No guarantees were made. Measuring the value of the content is qualitative and a fool's errand. I can quantify the number, type, and size of ads.
I guess the most important question is: do people even care? If there was a forum that users (customers) paid for with a modest fee, transparently described, instead of some exploitative ramping up of ads, would that be an alternative that consumers would to choose?
No way I would pay $300 yearly for seeing gif advertisements each day.
Slashdot has your better users at the moment compared to HN. It’s probably so because who the hell tells anyone about Slashdot now days? And any of the new kids would get laughed away usually. You just have to know what you are looking for.
Rule of thumb:
Avoid any place with under 25s, they are too lame to converse with.
Saying everything is political removes any meaning from the word politics.
I like Wikipedia’s definition of politics: “Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.”
Any subject arising from the interactions of people can be viewed through a political lens of some sort, but the saying you’re objecting to is typically used in the context of the coded attempt to censor or ignore unpleasant news as being “political”, which in truth usually just translates to “I resent being forced to acknowledge this.”
Literally nothing is perfect in the world, but that leaves all the room in the world for variation. No painting is perfect, neither mine nor Van Gogh's - why do people pay so much for Van Gogh's?
“The left spent four years telling us how dumb Trump is… Then they drop this *** on us.”
I bleeped out the derogatory language.
That’s not right wing politics. That’s just childish drivel. That looks nothing like a HN for other niches.
A look at retalk's homepage shows similar subforums to reddit like /ufc /funny and /todayilearned so it's more of a reddit replacement than a niche political forum, HN style.
The discussion appears to be civil as well, but everyone has there similar opinions and no reason to argue so that's not saying much.
Posting, commenting and upvoting each cost 1 satoshi (around $0.0003, currently).