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Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?

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Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?

#41

Post by jancsika »

brudgers wrote: post #15

I suspect statistically, the HN for X is HN. 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 wel…

> I suspect statistically, the HN for X is HN.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?

#42

Post by specialist »

zucker42 wrote: post #35

This used to be called Reddit. Not so much anymore, since they started optimizing for advertisers instead of users. 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 for…

I just can't imagine why all threaded forums aren't structured like HN (and lobste.rs). For the life of me, neither slashdot nor reddit has ever made any sense to me. Everything else, less so.

The flat (non-threaded) forums have their place. For low traffic, low engagement blog comments feedback stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?

#44

Post by egypturnash »

brudgers wrote: post #15

I suspect statistically, the HN for X is HN. 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 wel…

I am trying to imagine the reaction an artist or musician would get to "Show HN: here is some art I do" and it is at least 50% "what is this doing here, HN is for programmer/startup stuff". I am pretty sure the HN for X, where X is "art" or "music", is not HN.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?

#45

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

davmar wrote: post #39
Strom wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the politics in discussing which anchor screw holds the most weight in drywall? Saying everything is political removes any meaning from the word politics.

If you rent, you can't put an anchor screw in the drywall. Who rents vs. who owns is political!

How many drywall screws? How corrosion resistant must they be for any given environment? Why screws rather than adhesive or nails?

Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?

#47

Post by sonotathrowaway »

Strom wrote: post #38
kennywinker wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be that guy, but literally nothing is apolitical. Hn minus explicitly political content is is just status quo maintenance news.

Where's the politics in discussing which anchor screw holds the most weight in drywall? Saying everything is political removes any meaning from the word politics.

I could easily make an argument for price, availability, requirements for local zoning codes.

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.”

Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?

#48

Post by mmdoda »

davmar wrote: post #39
Strom wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the politics in discussing which anchor screw holds the most weight in drywall? Saying everything is political removes any meaning from the word politics.

If you rent, you can't put an anchor screw in the drywall. Who rents vs. who owns is political!

Why would anybody in this hypothetical thread discuss the politics of owning/renting, when that doesn't bring you closer to any solution?

Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?

#49

Post by runawaybottle »

There are specific sports forums (for example) that trump anything out there. It’s way better than the subreddit. They are all out there but the community is self selected, as in, you really have to be into that shit to seek such a place out. Anyone that finds those places knows exactly where they are, as in, they know how ‘generic’ and ‘surface-level’ more broadcasted alternatives are (subreddits, HN).

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.

Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?

#50

Post by harshthedev »

specialist wrote: post #42
zucker42 wrote: post #35

This used to be called Reddit. Not so much anymore, since they started optimizing for advertisers instead of users. 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 for…

I just can't imagine why all threaded forums aren't structured like HN (and lobste.rs). For the life of me, neither slashdot nor reddit has ever made any sense to me. Everything else, less so. The flat (non-threaded) forums have their place. For low traffic, low engagement blog comments feedback stuff.

What's the difference between HN and Reddit's thread structure? Both are threaded. And I actually prefer the lines besides the comments, makes the discussion easier to follow.
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