I’ve set up https://news.python.sc but it lost some traction recently
Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
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Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Art and music topics do appear on HN front page, but only when they satisfy intellectual curiosity. Sharing art or music itself rarely does this, but I remember recently seeing an acid house generator, and another had a constellation of electronic music samples along a long page.
really wish there was a “Literature Extension,” actually specifically for HN love this website & audience but am doing work in the “building copyleft storytelling” space - a community of which does not yet seem to exist but wait a sec - what “building copyleft storytelling” even mean except for sounding like some make believe fantasy thing? by vision rn it’s something like coding but with respect to allowing a new co…
What's the best way to contact you?
We could have an interesting conversation since we've been working on very similar things.
edit: email and socials are in my profile
Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate to be that guy, but literally nothing is apolitical. Hn minus explicitly political content is is just status quo maintenance news.
> literally nothing is apolitical Literally nothing is perfect in the world, but that leaves all the room in the world for variation. No painting is perfect, neither mine nor Van Gogh's - why do people pay so much for Van Gogh's?
It’s funny, because the reason van gogh’s work is held in such high regard likely has a lot more to do with politics than the particular merits of his work.
Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
#94Elektronauts ( https://elektronauts.com ) is a great forum for discussing electronic music production. It’s affiliated with the Swedish brand Elektron, so there’s a lot of content specific to their kit, but there is also a lot of general music making (and wider) discussion. It reminds me of HN in the sense that it is very well moderated - it’s rare to see anyone trying to cause trouble and they get shut down quickly…
Another one for electronic music making (Monome associated) is lines https://llllllll.co/
Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, no discussion of free software?
I just want to talk about how to build cool shit I don't want to hear about licenses or crap about how me sharing my code with restrictions isn't really "open source", so no, nothing about "free software" . Stop trying to "gotcha" random people with stupid questions.
What do you mean, freeware?
Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
#96It's such a catch-22. You want more people to want to use your favorite niche forum. But every niche forum that's gotten popular has been ruined. Reddit has a few great subreddits. They aren't unpopular, but I also prefer not to market them. Let the people who really want it search for it, I guess.
Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution | Meaningness https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
I can think of many examples to the contrary (gaming (particularly ttrpgs), game development, amateur filmmaking, anime, music, fan fiction) which have only benefited from "mainstream" acceptance (primarily through the web - which itself "ruined" the internet,) rather than having been ruined by it. Also the hostile dynamic between mops and geeks described in the article isn't something I've observed in the wild. As far as I can tell most of the time mops and geeks (and even the "sociopaths") turn out to be more or less the same.
One would expect all of these former subcultures turned cultures to be entirely populated by sociopaths and mops giving nothing of quality back to the community, and for the geeks to have long fled the stables, but (to use an example) the people playing D&D today are just as passionate and creative as the people playing it in the 70s and 80s were.
What the article describes is a tendency, it happens, but it's not an axiom. In my experience, gatekeepers paranoid about maintaining their status and ego do far more harm than "muggles" learning about it.
Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
#97I suspect statistically, the HN for X is HN. A topic silo encourages people to behave in ways that might help them reach the top of the silo. Getting to the top is expedited by pushing other people down. Even worse, it is expedited by driving out expertise. The dynamics of HN prevent that. Topics so broad that being way outside your domain is the normal state of encountering an HN topic for everyone. Nobody has a wel…
> I suspect statistically, the HN for X is HN. I don't find that to be true for certain topics: * unions and unionization (apparently 9 out of 10 HN uncles agree unions are bad news for a mountain of uncles' evidence) * current state of research in the social sciences (you have to wade through inescapable trolls who wish to throw out entire fields of research because they once read an eviscerating blog by an angry gr…
Re: social sciences. It is not always trolling. As a physicist, when I look at the abysmally low quality of data analysis and bias in presenting the results I have zero confidence in what is claimed.
If there was actual willingness for these journals to publish rigorous papers where bad statistics are rejected, maybe people would have more trust (and not have fun of the "science" often found in the papers)
Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
#98Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
#99I suspect statistically, the HN for X is HN. A topic silo encourages people to behave in ways that might help them reach the top of the silo. Getting to the top is expedited by pushing other people down. Even worse, it is expedited by driving out expertise. The dynamics of HN prevent that. Topics so broad that being way outside your domain is the normal state of encountering an HN topic for everyone. Nobody has a wel…
I built a topic silo modeled after HN and I've been running it for 2 years so I think I can address some of your statements.
It's a problem validation platform[1] called needgap. Problems are the first class citizens submitted as posts. Startup ideas, MVP, Products to solve the problems goes into comments.
I modeled it after HN for the reasons mentioned by OP and I wanted it to minimal design wise for reasons made clear below. I built it on top of Kenny Grant's golangnews.com project.
It's usually the Entrepreneurs who create posts for validating a problem/need-gap. They and other entrepreneurs comment about solutions or their own product. Consumers who are searching for a solution for their problem visit the respective needgap thread, Check out the products and sometimes make a comment.
Insights like number of people visiting a problem, top 3 countries (week/month) and how many will pay for that startup idea in the comment are available to subscribers($5 USD).
> to the top is expedited by pushing other people down
> it is expedited by driving out expertise
Voting is just for platform sanctity at needgap and doesn't add much value to the validation(Views from search, Comments are more important). Further, voting rights(karma) can be gained only by commenting and Downvotes burn a karma. Votes are shown only to the owner.
> Nobody has a well informed opinion about most of the items on the front page
That's why needgap doesn't rely upon regular user's subject matter expertise but that occasional (often one-time) visitor's expertise about knowing about a problem (or) knowing how to solve that problem.
Validation happens through those who might actually need our product and not by a bunch of people in a closed platform like most 'pay for a startup idea' type platforms. Hence minimalism of HN matters, email is optional like HN. Someone who comes to needgap from Google Search doesn't even need to know what needgap is.
> there is no way to get to the top of HN
Lifetime of posts (problems) is very long at needgap, 2 year old problem still get solutions as the need for solution exists as long as need-gap exists.
But since number of problems/day is low when compared to HN almost all genuine problems(i.e. problem != startup idea) gets its way to home page and many stay there for several months.
There are about 3500 registered users, almost as many visit needgap every single day organically.
Re: Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
#100Little bit different route, but usenet. UI wise there are several clients (newsreaders), thunderbird is usable.
Finding good healty groups can be challenge, but they are there. One thing I like, there is healty amount of non-english speaking groups, like germans or italians.