Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff?

#31

Post by sgdesign » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 1:08 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #8

I have a somewhat radical, sadly not novel suggestion: build what you're looking for. I now have a semi-private "HN Reader" which has completely broken my HN habit while still feeding me stuff I might be interested in. Because I built it, I can make it do anything I want. I've started to turn it into a slightly broader search engine so that I can find the things that I'm looking for; I got sick of seeing search engin…

If anybody wants an easy way to set up their own HN, may I suggest taking a look at Telescope?

http://telesc.pe/

It's a real-time, open source HN clone built on Meteor, with features like invite-only mode, notifications, and a lot more stuff.

And since it's open source, if something is missing you can always code it yourself and contribute it back to the project.

Re: Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff?

#32

Post by p4bl0 » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 1:11 PM UTC

polshaw wrote: post #25

VMG wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you build the next HN, please add an API

What are the main reasons you want an API?

I guess something like the possibility to have a mobile application (either web based or native app) which would be usable (the tiny up- and down-vote arrows of HN are not easy to use using a finger on a touchscreen) and which would actually work by not relying on html-parsing or search kludge.

Re: Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff?

#33

Post by INTPenis » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 1:11 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #22

Programming Reddit (Proggit) is more focused on programming (as opposed to politics, tech startups) and therefore, I would argue, is more likely to have the sorts of links you're looking for. But, in my experience, the quality of discussion is lower (though quite high in absolute standards) and you're more likely to have a good comment downvoted.

If you take away the religious subreddits like atheism, politics and worldnews you can make your own reddit well worth its weight in neutrinos.

Re: Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff?

#34

Post by dysoco » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 1:13 PM UTC

I've been thinking in making something similar: But I though people might not be interested having HN, Reddit and Slashdot.

Re: Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff?

#35

Post by shardling » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 1:14 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #22

Programming Reddit (Proggit) is more focused on programming (as opposed to politics, tech startups) and therefore, I would argue, is more likely to have the sorts of links you're looking for. But, in my experience, the quality of discussion is lower (though quite high in absolute standards) and you're more likely to have a good comment downvoted.

r/math generally has a pretty high quality of discussion.

Re: Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff?

#36

Post by blissland » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 1:19 PM UTC

p4bl0 wrote: post #32

polshaw wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the main reasons you want an API?

I guess something like the possibility to have a mobile application (either web based or native app) which would be usable (the tiny up- and down-vote arrows of HN are not easy to use using a finger on a touchscreen) and which would actually work by not relying on html-parsing or search kludge.

>> I guess something like the possibility to have a mobile application

See http://ihackernews.com/

Re: Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff?

#37

Post by aw3c2 » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 1:33 PM UTC

aerique wrote: post #29

No mention of Usenet :-(. It scores on many of the points you mentioned (Reddit subreddits come close.) I'm sad this part of the net has been fading into obscurity the last ten years especially since its alternatives have proven to be inadequate. Its greatest power was it being decentralised and thus couldn't be policed by anyone, the variety and custom readers. Its greatest weak point was perhaps the trolls. Maybe o…

Voting, a threaded display that does not break, no insane quoting, some markup, karma

Re: Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff?

#38

Post by polyfractal » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 1:36 PM UTC

polshaw wrote: post #24

Very sad to see all the 'HN competitors' (lobsters, hackful, lamernews) are all essentially dead (at least extremely dormant). To me, all they needed were a small handful of dedicated posters/commenters (and to be open, i'm looking at you lobste.rs) to start to catch on; i'm very much reminded of the story of the reddit founders sockpuppeting to make the site not look like a ghost town; this kind of 'forced' activity…

Lobsters isn't dead, just not as noisy. I check it once a day and usually walk away with one interesting tech article. Discussions are less lively, but that's because every site follows the 90:10 law (90% lurk, 10% comment)

Re: Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff?

#39

Post by DanBC » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 1:36 PM UTC

aerique wrote: post #29

No mention of Usenet :-(. It scores on many of the points you mentioned (Reddit subreddits come close.) I'm sad this part of the net has been fading into obscurity the last ten years especially since its alternatives have proven to be inadequate. Its greatest power was it being decentralised and thus couldn't be policed by anyone, the variety and custom readers. Its greatest weak point was perhaps the trolls. Maybe o…

I agree that Usenet was fantastic.

> what does Hackernews as a website have over f.e. a newsgroup alt.news.hackers?

Communal voting?

> Its greatest weak point was perhaps the trolls. Maybe others can supply more weaknesses?

A rigid definition of what counts as spam (Breidbart index)?

People using all kinds of domains in the From: header. That's a problem because bots scrape the from header for sending spam, and there's nothing to stop people using valid domains that don't belong to them.

Re: Ask HN: A place like HN but with more nerdy stuff and less social stuff?

#40

Post by polyfractal » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 1:38 PM UTC

zalew wrote: post #13

jacquesc wrote: post #6

http://lobste.rs seems like exactly what you want. It's a good community, give it a try

reminds me of http://hackful.eu - good links, good idea, good intentions, but almost no engagement, and the only link with more than 3 comments is a meta-discussion.

It's still growing. Development is active, people post plenty of interesting stories. Commenting is slowly increasing. These things take time, and the core group of posters are still posting links on a daily basis which is what a nascent community needs to survive the initial "lull".

I'm very hopeful for Lobsters.