Ask HN: What sites do you contribute to the most, besides HN/Twitter/FB? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What sites do you contribute to the most, besides HN/Twitter/FB?

We are almost finished building a tool (Thoughtly) that quantifies people's written contributions online, so people can display their life experience in a broader context. We want to make sure our first version accounts for platforms and data sources that users find the most valuable. Do you publish academic papers to sites like Mendeley? Are you an active Redditor? Stackoverflow? What are your go to sites to engage in intellectual dialogue, besides HN (and social platforms like Twitter/FB)? With so many data sources and API's to choose from, we want to make sure we account for what people care most about! Thanks. http://thoughtly.co

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I contribute a bit to Quora. Despite the bad rap that Quora has on HN, Quora does a really good job of curating posts, and there are a lot of extremely high quality posts related to software and startups. It's a lot less nitpicky than HN because anecdotes and opinions are perfectly fine on Quora.

That's interesting. While it may be slightly less particular it allows for more organic conversation. I appreciate your insight.

I do a lot of very informal writing online, mostly in Subreddits related to my field, but also in comments on news articles at places like Wired and Ars. I find that you learn almost as much from the (non-insane) comments as you do from the articles themselves. This is probably the same reason I use/read Reddit. I do have some more academic writing published on Academia.edu and SSRN, but I don't engage in discussion there. Best of luck!

Awesome, thanks! Published work is - whether the author thinks about it this way or not - now considered just a foundation/framework for ongoing discussions. If you can filter the batty (which I hope we can help with), then the comments are really an addendum to the original article.

I am an occasional Yahoo answers user. However recently, it has been Hacker News and Facebook for me.

Do you have a history with Yahoo answers? How do you compare it with other Q&A sites? Also, the vicious HN-FB cycle, we all empathize with. Thanks.

Hey!

Yahoo Answers is pretty interesting and it works on a point based system. Basically, the more questions you answer, the more points you gain. You also get points for "voting" on the best answer to each question (not as many as answering though). If the most people vote for your answer as "best answer" then you get 10 points.

That may have been a confusing explanation, but I definitely like the system (which keeps users engaged). And Hacker News does this as well with its karma system, although it works in a different way. Some of my friends are hooked on to this one chatting website (www.zobe.com), and it has a karma system as well. Basically, all the sites i've seen that have a point based/karma system are quite "vicious" as you put it (they have very consistent users).

I also forgot to mention- I also began recently using Quora, and i've liked it so far! Reminds me of Yahoo Answers but it definitely seems newer and fancier.

I'm interested in hearing more about the project you're working on! Please elaborate on what you're trying to do :)

No, that's a great answer. Contribution based karma system seem more value-driven than a popularity based (or only) upvote platform. That's really what we are trying to address.

We see the problem as social media visibility is based on popularity - despite the fact that the popularity doesn't ensure quality. Afterall group think isn't necessarily a good thing...

Emerging social media and news platforms try to identify quality content but their quality metrics are based on popularity.

Thoughtly approaches the problem by accounting for users written contributions online. By quantifying users' personal data - from sites like Stackexchange and Quora we display an individual's involvement in a field. This allows you to objectively compare perspectives from different kinds of people. Think, "actions speak louder than words." Well, we finally for the first time in human history have enough data from disparate sources that we can rely on actionable data and not just resumes and mildly subjective about me sites.

I'd be happy to discuss it further and thanks for your interest. I hope you check us out. We are launching to iOS soon - the app is approved, now we are polishing the backend data sources.

Stackexchange (and to a lesser extent Quora and LinkedIn) are the obvious answers

Nice, we are currently implementing the rest of the Stackexchange sites, as we started with just Stackoverflow. The caliber of content on the stackexchange network is phenomenal. Is there a specific stackexchange site that you would be proud to display your credentials from? Thanks!

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