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Offer HN: create a collaborative tech blog?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Offer HN: create a collaborative tech blog?

#11

Post by tikhonj »

Sounds brilliant.

I'm a student, so I don't have enough time (and probably don't know enough) to maintain my own blog, but I would love to write an article or two once in a while.

Also, discussing articles with other contributors before publication sounds like a great way for me to improve my own writing quality--it's like free editing.

What do you (and other interested people) think the minimum number of contributors is? How many people would make something like this both interesting and lasting (e.g. people continue publishing posts in the far future)?

Re: Offer HN: create a collaborative tech blog?

#12

Post by pault »

This is a great idea, but a lot of thought needs to be put into how it could be abused. Some potential problems that come to mind immediately are: self-promotion, low quality posts, SEO shenanigans, and wikipedia style edit wars.

What keeps HN relevant and high-quality is the flagging and voting system, and I don't know how that translates to a git-based architecture.

EDIT: I misunderstood how github's pull requests work. Sounds like a perfect tool to maintain community standards.

Re: Offer HN: create a collaborative tech blog?

#13

Post by tikhonj »

pault wrote: post #12

This is a great idea, but a lot of thought needs to be put into how it could be abused. Some potential problems that come to mind immediately are: self-promotion, low quality posts, SEO shenanigans, and wikipedia style edit wars. What keeps HN relevant and high-quality is the flagging and voting system, and I don't know how that translates to a git-based architecture. EDIT: I misunderstood how github's pull requests…

I think this is where using pull requests to submit articles really shines.

The community would vet articles and potentially help with editing and clarity. This would help contributors make sure their articles are well-written and well thought-out, while giving readers consistently high-quality content.

Of course, this requires an at least moderately engaged community of contributors, but I think that's completely reasonable. We would also have to be careful not to scare away insightful people who aren't great writers, but I think it would be manageable.

Re: Offer HN: create a collaborative tech blog?

#16

Post by pault »

tikhonj wrote: post #13
pault wrote: post #12

This is a great idea, but a lot of thought needs to be put into how it could be abused. Some potential problems that come to mind immediately are: self-promotion, low quality posts, SEO shenanigans, and wikipedia style edit wars. What keeps HN relevant and high-quality is the flagging and voting system, and I don't know how that translates to a git-based architecture. EDIT: I misunderstood how github's pull requests…

I think this is where using pull requests to submit articles really shines. The community would vet articles and potentially help with editing and clarity. This would help contributors make sure their articles are well-written and well thought-out, while giving readers consistently high-quality content. Of course, this requires an at least moderately engaged community of contributors, but I think that's completely re…

I agree. Who gets push access to master?

Re: Offer HN: create a collaborative tech blog?

#17

Post by phzbOx »

I like it; I do agree that there are many blogs hidden somewhere with gems in them. Meanwhile, when posting on HN, you can use the 'text' inside of the url and write the article in it. It's not nearly the same; but it's tweetable and can get feedback/exposure to the community.
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