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Hacker news, but for ideas

idea-ne.ws

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Re: Hacker news, but for ideas

#31

Post by chrischen »

rglullis wrote: post #19
amichail wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that talking about ideas -- especially your own -- is somehow taboo. Rather unfortunate.

I'm sorry. I know this is going to sound harsh, but I'll be the one saying it - again - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182193 . Talking about ideas was never taboo. It's just that your ideas are consistently inane and not worth talking about.

It's always the crazy ideas that get marginalized by the majority, because chances are the majority are right. However the ideas that turn out to be great initially manifests as crazy to the majority. Rather unfortunate "adaptation" but the one way we can avoid killing potentially great things is to not discredit something until it can be proven to be bad, and to not discourage "weird" behavior.

Re: Hacker news, but for ideas

#32

Post by mahmud »

adriand wrote: post #22
chaosmachine wrote: post #18

Many of the headlines look like SEO spam. "Cheap custom suits for Men" "Jewelry delivery service" etc..

The "Cheap custom suits for Men" idea is described simply as "$100 custom suits for men.". This reminds me of the Ali G episode where he presents his idea for the ice cream glove ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkuOuxRD1Bc ). The Venn Diagram for $100 custom suits would have "all the people without much money" in one circle, and "all the people who want to be really well-dressed" in the other. The intersection repre…

I had that idea 3 years ago and even sourced the tailors in Vietnam :-) I want to Saigon with a backpack full of GQ, Esquire, and tons of catalogs. All that came out of it was some tiny tailors started making fashion-house suits in some Saigon slum and nothing was exported due to the messy business that is Vietnam shipping industry (they work best when you stay in the country and show up at the port. Vietnam Post is unreliable for frequent small shipments, for made to order garments. If you're gonna do business with locals make sure they have a $ stake in the venture, and foreigners there are slacker-type teachers, isolated in their own expat-communities and are not very business minded.)

Re: Hacker news, but for ideas

#33

Post by kyro »

DotSauce wrote: post #29

If I may respectfully say that the domain name is terrible. There must be a nice .COM brand name for such a concept? I was curious about the Hacker News backend, interesting to see it is open source. I really like the http://slinkset.com hosted service which is essentially the same functionality.

Slinkset is a YC company, too!

Re: Hacker news, but for ideas

#35

Post by sebastian »

DotSauce wrote: post #29

If I may respectfully say that the domain name is terrible. There must be a nice .COM brand name for such a concept? I was curious about the Hacker News backend, interesting to see it is open source. I really like the http://slinkset.com hosted service which is essentially the same functionality.

open source? Where can I download the code from?

Re: Hacker news, but for ideas

#36

Post by rglullis »

amichail wrote: post #23
rglullis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry. I know this is going to sound harsh, but I'll be the one saying it - again - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182193 . Talking about ideas was never taboo. It's just that your ideas are consistently inane and not worth talking about.

You shouldn't make people feel self-conscious about putting their ideas out there. Maybe something that sounds silly at first might develop into something more interesting with some discussion. Of course, you can have mechanisms in place to give everyone a chance to express their ideas. For example, you could make people pay for submissions using karma points.

I'd argue exactly the opposite. I want people to feel self-conscious about their own ideas. I want people to be reasonably good filters. We already live in an information overloaded world. If I started "putting my ideas" out there with no filter, I would certainly be a source of information with a terrible SNR.

And please, this is not saying that I want to conform to the majority. What I want is for you to stop transferring the burden of testing and validation of your ideas (especially ones at such an early phase) to others.

You say "maybe something that sounds silly at first might develop into something more interesting with some discussion". Honest question: has it happened before?

-----------

As an example, I'm going to take your last paragraph and show exactly what kind of "filters" I'm talking about, the kind of filters that you should be using:

Of course, you can have mechanisms in place to give everyone a chance to express their ideas. For example, you could make people pay for submissions using karma points.

Before typing the question, you should've recognized that:

1. There already are mechanisms in place to "give everyone a chance for people to express their ideas". It's called comment box.

2. Not everyone is here to "express their ideas". I am here to find good content. Some are here just because of the community. Some are here just because of YC.

3. There are other ways to express your ideas. For instance, you could easily start a blog or stick to twitter.

It does not take much to see that what you want is not "mechanisms in place to give everyone a chance to express their ideas", but actually what you are trying is to devise a solution for a problem that exists only in your head, i.e, "How can we turn this simple forum into some sort of discussion game?"

What bothers me is not the fact that you want to think on problems with little practical utility. What bothers me is that you expect others to join you without showing no glimpse of a solution!

Case in point: HN and reddit's source code is free. If you really think that either website would be better with your proposals, show us the code!

Re: Hacker news, but for ideas

#37

Post by rglullis »

chrischen wrote: post #31
rglullis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry. I know this is going to sound harsh, but I'll be the one saying it - again - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182193 . Talking about ideas was never taboo. It's just that your ideas are consistently inane and not worth talking about.

It's always the crazy ideas that get marginalized by the majority, because chances are the majority are right. However the ideas that turn out to be great initially manifests as crazy to the majority. Rather unfortunate "adaptation" but the one way we can avoid killing potentially great things is to not discredit something until it can be proven to be bad, and to not discourage "weird" behavior.

It's not my job to filter out every idea out there and try to prove it's a bad one. It's not up to me to carry the burden of proof.

Also, I don't "discourage weird behavior". I do discourage "weird behavior who relies on my acceptance of the terms", and that's what bugs me about amichail constant polls and 'ASK YC' posts.

To make an analogy, I don't mind reading about people who are into body modification, even to the point of sewing off their twin brother's arm, and reattaching to their own body (http://www.bme.com/news/people/A10101/addsub/). That is weird as fuck, but their experimentation does not rely on me participating in any way. You can bet that I would mind a lot if said twins start going around telling people how cool it is to have your brother's arm attached to your arm pit and that is "rather unfortunate" that nobody else listens to them.

Re: Hacker news, but for ideas

#38

Post by raquo »

sebastian wrote: post #35
DotSauce wrote: post #29

If I may respectfully say that the domain name is terrible. There must be a nice .COM brand name for such a concept? I was curious about the Hacker News backend, interesting to see it is open source. I really like the http://slinkset.com hosted service which is essentially the same functionality.

open source? Where can I download the code from?

http://arclanguage.org/

Re: Hacker news, but for ideas

#39

Post by jacquesm »

rglullis wrote: post #36
amichail wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't make people feel self-conscious about putting their ideas out there. Maybe something that sounds silly at first might develop into something more interesting with some discussion. Of course, you can have mechanisms in place to give everyone a chance to express their ideas. For example, you could make people pay for submissions using karma points.

I'd argue exactly the opposite. I want people to feel self-conscious about their own ideas. I want people to be reasonably good filters. We already live in an information overloaded world. If I started "putting my ideas" out there with no filter, I would certainly be a source of information with a terrible SNR. And please, this is not saying that I want to conform to the majority. What I want is for you to stop trans…

I really don't like this personal attack. If you don't like amichails post / comments ignore him or vote him down.

Inspiration can come from the most unexpected sources and we have the vote button in order to express what we think is good stuff and what isn't.

As of this writing amichail has 5x the karma that you have, and you are both members of the sites for roughly equal duration. I think I'll let that speak for itself.

As for the quality of amichails content, it would not be the first time that a 'wrong' idea with a bit of tweaking made someone a fortune.

@amichail, please keep them coming, worst case you will make us laugh, best case you will make us proud by scoring one day with one of your 'odd' ideas.

I'm sure whoever dreamed up the hula hoop must have been ridiculed, but I am fairly sure he/she laughed last.

Re: Hacker news, but for ideas

#40

Post by Mongoose »

bemmu wrote: post #12
SwellJoe wrote: post #4

Didn't you get the memo? Ideas have very little value on their own.

That's why it's OK just to trade them around for fun. Btw. I'm getting "502 BAD GATEWAY" all the time.

I got a 502 also, but it seems to actually create the accounts. Try logging in with the credentials you entered.
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