Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry

#111

Post by petercooper » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 11:53 AM UTC

whyleyc wrote: post #76

tdeangelis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true: I was going for a funny and short name that's easy to remember, but I realize now how boredBanker comes across as lazy and not conducive to interesting discussions. EDIT: I am currently considering changing the domain (and the title)

Don't ! BoredBanker is an excellent name - memorable, amusing & not overly long. There's already enough dry, grey, "serious" content associated with this industry - having an offbeat and slightly subversive name will be part of your appeal. People who tell you they won't use the site because of the name are being disingenuous - if the quality of news & discussion is good enough they'll come.

Exactly, Windows "Vista", the "Xbox", the "Wii", the "iPad".. and more were all ridiculed as stupid names early on but all became serious brands. You couldn't move online for jokes about the "iPad" being a female hygiene product for a while around the launch..

Re: Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry

#112

Post by jakarta » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 11:58 AM UTC

jackgavigan wrote: post #97

For context: I'm sat on a trading floor in the City of London right now. I had a similar idea (inspired by Slashdot) about ten years ago but, like so many of my great ideas (e.g. time travel, teleportation), I never got around to implementing it. A site like BoredBanker.com will almost certainly be targeted by wannabes, trolls and banker-haters. If you don't keep them off the site, real bankers will be turned off by…

I think the best example of recruiting good members is the SumZero model. SumZero is a buyside investor site, where buysiders can exchange and rank investment ideas with each other. It was started by Divya Narendra of Facebook fame.

When I first signed up for SumZero, the application process was pretty extensive. It involved a phone call with Divya or one of the other co-founders to check you out and make sure you weren't just some wannabe, that you actually worked at an investment fund.

I actually think was critical early on to make sure the membership base was high quality and acted as a self-reinforcing mechanism to continue to attract good members.

Re: Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry

#113

Post by king_magic » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 11:59 AM UTC

drippingfist wrote: post #95

king_magic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually love this as a name. I was originally going to say "just stick with Financier News", but Banker News is perfect. I actually like the idea of this site. I spent a few years consulting in financial services and always found the world fascinating. I could see myself browsing it on a regular basis.

5?

I'm not sure what you're asking?

Re: Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry

#114

Post by rodolphoarruda » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 12:13 PM UTC

Nice. Let me zoom in 200% like I do it in HN. Why make headlines so tiny?

Re: Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry

#115

Post by chalst » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 12:19 PM UTC

jackgavigan wrote: post #97

For context: I'm sat on a trading floor in the City of London right now. I had a similar idea (inspired by Slashdot) about ten years ago but, like so many of my great ideas (e.g. time travel, teleportation), I never got around to implementing it. A site like BoredBanker.com will almost certainly be targeted by wannabes, trolls and banker-haters. If you don't keep them off the site, real bankers will be turned off by…

Since bankers know who other bankers are, a system like the mod_virgule that powers Advogato [1,2] would solve this problem, though the site would need some tweaks [3] .

The attraction of the system is that, if you keep an eye out for clever attacks against the model (i.e., something like security fixes), and if certification activity by "good" users is essentially sane, then such a site needs no ongoing moderation by the site owners.

[1]: http://svn.dprg.org/viewvc/mod_virgule/trunk/

[2]: http://www.advogato.org/

[3]: The codebase hasn't been touched, and there's a form of attack that, while it is known how to solve it, has not been fixed on the main site; also the UI has some cruft and doesn't support an HN-like leaderboard view - the codebase is fairly simple, though, and lots of people have hacked on it over the years.

Re: Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry

#116

Post by Dirlewanger » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 12:26 PM UTC

Brakenshire wrote: post #49

iheartmemcache wrote: post #29

I highly suggest you curate the quality of your posts, users and comments. Perhaps, even at the expense of potential users. I think reddit is a prime example of how badly quality can deteriorate. I know there's no metric for 'good' vs 'bad' comments we can appeal to but I think we can all understand that all the 'true' subreddits[1] denote the fact that once you get far enough on the adoption curve[2] quality will st…

Metafilter is another example of a website which has maintained its character. They ask for a $5 lifetime membership fee.

Retained its character at the expense of being stuck in the mid 2000s. For a modern aggregator they have a shit layout to be honest. A site that gets as much traffic as they do and they still have flat comments?? Inexcusable.

Re: Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry

#117

Post by edraferi » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 12:51 PM UTC

turar wrote: post #45

stevenj wrote: post #39

As someone who's tried starting a new HN for business news (forlue.com, now defunct) after New Mogul left us I found the most difficult thing was getting a niche community to consistently submit stories. If you know of a small group of people (ideally in the financial/money industry) who'd be interested in this, get them to use it amongst each other to trade stories during the day. I still believe there's a market fo…

The working solution (proven by Reddit) is to create a ton of fake accounts and post stories from them, and have them talk to each other in comments.

No chicken? No egg? use bots!

Re: Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry

#118

Post by edraferi » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 12:56 PM UTC

austinz wrote: post #25

This is cool, and I hope it catches on. Despite its flaws and quirks I think HN has something nice going on in terms of the overall submission and discussion quality, and I don't think it should be restricted to just 'hackers' (or startup founders, software engineers, enthusiasts, etc). Just like how there's a whole ecosystem of Stack Exchange sites for a variety of interests, maybe there should be more HN-like sites…

Stack Exchange is an interesting example. they have a complex nomination and incubation system in place to figure out what sub sites to add. this ensures that they only sites when is a proven community to jump in.

They have a very mature software stack that relies on a complex point system to automate curation. HN is much more of a one-man show

Re: Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry

#119

Post by jackgavigan » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 1:13 PM UTC

stevejalim wrote: post #102

jackgavigan wrote: post #97

For context: I'm sat on a trading floor in the City of London right now. I had a similar idea (inspired by Slashdot) about ten years ago but, like so many of my great ideas (e.g. time travel, teleportation), I never got around to implementing it. A site like BoredBanker.com will almost certainly be targeted by wannabes, trolls and banker-haters. If you don't keep them off the site, real bankers will be turned off by…

Related to this, take a look at how lobste.rs handles new members: you either need an invitation from an existing one (and your behaviour is associated with that person in the public tree of membership referrals) or you go into a member-visible queue until someone who knows you and is a member can invite you personally.

That's very clique-y.

Re: Show HN: I made an HN for the financial industry

#120

Post by dfc » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 1:16 PM UTC

Dwolb wrote: post #109

jackgavigan wrote: post #97

For context: I'm sat on a trading floor in the City of London right now. I had a similar idea (inspired by Slashdot) about ten years ago but, like so many of my great ideas (e.g. time travel, teleportation), I never got around to implementing it. A site like BoredBanker.com will almost certainly be targeted by wannabes, trolls and banker-haters. If you don't keep them off the site, real bankers will be turned off by…

One alternate mechanism (there could be several) sure to ruffle feathers is to qualify users by their GMAT score (e.g. 700+ only), assuming such information were easily verifiable. Such a 'qualification club' is inline with my own view of the type of exclusivity sought after by sterotyped or caricature B-school personalities.

I take it you have very little experience with the GMAT. It is impossible to verify that a certain GMAT score belongs to an email. The only easy way to verify a GMAT score is to be a b-school and have applicants select your school for score reporting.