Ask HN: Alternatives to HN less web-focused and more technical/professional?

I'm genuinely interested about topics you would like to read about/discuss in these areas.

If you are more prone to be personally expossed trends start to matter more and influence which stacks you'll get involved into.

Sadly that has a self-serving foundation but, what can you do about it? In the other hand, happily, disruption is healthy.

I've seen all of those topics you mention gain traction, probably with the exception of "climbing the career ladder at big corp", but that's the broader Zeitgeist not just HN.

The way to get more C++/Fortran/Java discussion on HN is to submit good relevant content. If you post something really really good, sometimes the James Gosling of X shows up to comment because HN's diversity keeps them around. But any really good topic is likely to draw comments from people who worked with the James Gosling of X because HN has a lot of those people.

HN has grown large enough that there is an audience for just about any tech topic so long as the resource is reasonably good...in fact, that's been the case for a long time, and this from someone who was posting articles about Windows and Microsoft in the days where every time the Macbook got a new 8% faster Core 2, the front page of HN was dominated by the press release and Ask HN was full of "are you upgrading?" treads.

In the end, finding or creating good content is the way to increase discussion of the topics one finds interesting and to influence the direction of the community.

- I am looking for a discussion forum, not an aggregator.

- By "web-focused" I meant posts about website development technology used on client and/or server side. Some of this technology is still interesting, like databases, but there is a lot more, e.g. desktop sw technologies, algorithms etc.

- By "technical" I meant in-depth technology reviews and discussions. More posts by people that are not about "how to use x" but "how x works inside".

- By "professional" I meant posts not about computer science basics (stuff a person knows when going through formal education and/or long years of practical experience).

Thank you for your suggestions. I looked through the websites you posted. Do you know what the purpose of http://www.datatau.com/ is? They do not really tell on their website (or do they?).

This being said, I do not mean to be disrespectful towards someone who "only" has practical training (they may be older so that when they studied there was no formal computer-specific education).

edit: nice typo "sad" -> "said" ;)

This looks awesome, I would love to talk more, I have been looking for something like this

`User your own domain name` should be `Use your own domain name`

If you are interested in lobste.rs invitations send me an email with your "keybase profile" and at least 1 public network identification that will let me know that you're not a self-destructive troll and I'll be happy to help you.

UPDATE: Since I received a lot more emails than I thought and it's time consuming, my offer stands for another 24 hours.

regards

And is it unfair to lobsters to say the posts all seem very very familiar? Just asking as one is always worried about missing out on the next great thing, but the HN niche seems pretty well filled?

As a guy born in Serbia, I have to say that this is the first creative domain I saw with .rs extension.

To me, this is a (major) downside. Among other reasons: I'd want a website where people like me felt welcome. And I know that for me, personally, I do not feel welcome at any site that didn't even allow me to join.

For example, only drop things off the frontpage, if nobody made a comment for 24 hours. Obviously, this builds up a queue of content. Now we could let people vote on these for ordering the queue, but comments are only allowed for frontpage stuff. Hm, sounds very similar to plain old web forums, though.

Here, you can find expert level commentary on pretty much any field from philosophy to economics to law enforcement (aside from the technology experts that are a given), whereas in /. you generally have to dig deeper in a comment stream to find anything approaching the same value.

The issue is something everyone overlooks when making these kinds of judgements: adaptability. You have to be able to evolve and adapt to the changing times and, most importantly, adapt and evolve with your user base. This is where reddit really shines and one of the big reasons why places like Fark, mefi and slashdot stagnated and quit growing (relatively speaking).

Large online communities are highly dynamic. There is user churn, as well as the obvious cultural evolution that takes place. Places like fark and slashdot never evolved and adapted with their users and the changing times so people eventually get bored and leave. It's one of the reasons for their stagnation. Mods have to be adaptable and evolve with their communities.

Reddit is evolution and adaptability personified. It's the culture itself running the show over there (anyone can create a subreddit), so the new users with their new ideas, interests, memes, etc all have a place. When something gets boring, old or loses popularity (like FFFUUU comics) it doesn't hurt the site, just the subreddit. People just move from one subreddit to another instead of moving from one website to another.

And that's the problem with slashdot's mods (and fark's mods too). They're the same people and rarely do they let new blood in. And the new blood instantly conforms to the old guard's way of thinking and policies. The way content gets moderated always remains the same. This might be good short term (some people don't like change) but people do eventually get bored of the same old, same old.

Ten or more years ago it was a great site, then I noticed a gradual and general decline. Nowadays I follow it just sometimes.