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

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

#141

Post by benedikt »

michaelochurch wrote: post #74
personlurking wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and you're more likely to have a good comment downvoted." This has never made sense to me. On some subreddits that focus on disciplines (like AskHistorians among many others), you can easily get downvoted (ie "dissapeared") just by asking a question, let alone answering one. Other times you'll won't get upvoted nor downvoted when you've actually contributed to the discussion. In these instances I lurk even when I ca…

Reddit's voting system has two issues: (1) Lots of strategic downvoting. That's why no thread stays above 75%. It happens to comments as well as threads. Some of it is spammers trying to improve their own ranking, and some is probably just trolls. (2) "Stalker" downvoting, which is when a person retaliates to a comment by downvoting that person's contributions en masse . I wonder if they've put any machine learning m…

> (2) "Stalker" downvoting, which is when a person retaliates to a comment by downvoting that person's contributions en masse.

This is why downvots (or upvotes) are not registered if you vote from the user-page.

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

#142

Post by sillysaurus »

duck wrote: post #132
randomdata wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, HN already exposes an API over HTTP. It just uses HTML as the exchange format instead of XML or JSON.

Hmmm, not sure if I agree with that or not... but if so, it has a very limited usage quota before you get banned. :)

What API do you want? Automated submissions of posts is not a good idea, so that leaves data scraping.

If you're looking to extract data from HN, use HNSearch. http://www.hnsearch.com/

There's no reason to scrape data from HN itself.

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

#143

Post by krapp »

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…

I've thought about designing a community with script hacking in mind (a simple initial layout with an api) and then letting users be able to script it themselves through their accounts. If it could even be done safely and sanely, everyone could have the features they wanted by writing their own.

In lieu of that of course there's always greasemonkey.

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

#144

Post by stared »

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…

No up/down voting (so when a discussion get's longer you can track only the most valuable posts).

But otherwise... I miss Usenet so much. I was raised by Usenet, it shaped my life philosophy, I found my best friend there, not to mention knowledge I got.

So, maybe time to write a "Usenet 2.0", with: - up/downvotes, - markdown, - tags?

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

#145

Post by robot »

sgdesign wrote: post #31
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.

Text is dispersed too much. I prefer HN because you can read a lot more in a packed space.

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

#146

Post by VMG »

randomdata wrote: post #104
VMG wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Technically, HN already exposes an API over HTTP. It just uses HTML as the exchange format instead of XML or JSON.

I try to remember that line the next time my boss wants me to code an API.

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

#147

Post by stared »

ArekDymalski wrote: post #7

To me some parts of stackoverflow might appear interesting to you.

Rather http://stackexchange.com/sites (as a side note, I've just made a map of their sites, here http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/157976/map-of-all-se... with a discussion, code on GitHub). There are very dedicated communities, from TeX to gardening.

The good thing is that there are great (just IMHO).

The bad thing is that, not everything fits in the question-and-answer scheme. There are many interesting subject, which are:

open-ended,

or requiring polling,

or - brainstorming.

Also, not every topic is covered, but it that case you can create your own SE site (with http://area51.stackexchange.com/); just it takes time and effort to gather the critical mass (at least 200, usually - much more).

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

#149

Post by k3n »

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.

AskScience is also curated very well and can make for some interesting reading.

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

#150

Post by im3w1l »

mylittlepony wrote: post #69
lclarkmichalek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth does anyone think this is trolling? Anyway, I disagree with your points. 1) There is a very big difference between a heated argument and an argument. Maybe it's just a side effect of the medium we are using, but everyone seems to have so much trouble being civil. For example, instead of suggesting that OP go look to North Korea, you could have said "For me, the heated discussions are a good thing" or som…

Everyone is suggesting Reddit, but there too you will find heated arguments [1]. In general, HN comments are way better, and trolls are kept in line. [1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/135b5z/yes_the_f...

No on is suggesting /r/technology though. There are subreddits out there that are a lot better.
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