[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
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Ask HN: Hacker News like forums for other niches?
Forums that are _actually_ like HN that have a minimal interface
and promote actual discussion with tree like threads unlike other
forums where you can barely see 4 people 's response and can hardly
tell who's replying to who.
Author : harshthedev
Score : 84 points
Date : 2021-07-11 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| https://www.home-barista.com/ is a great forum for espresso and
| coffee enthusiasts. It has some particularly engaging threads of
| people who take old, rusted out machines and restore them to
| glory. One good example: https://www.home-
| barista.com/repairs/conti-prestina-espresso...
| [deleted]
| nosianu wrote:
| Ha, I wanted to suggest that too!
|
| For my region and all German speakers a (the?) relevant site is
| https://www.kaffee-netz.de/
|
| It is pretty active and has a lot of topics around coffee and
| coffee making technologies and techniques. It's definitely on a
| similar level to what OP was asking, I had to think of it
| immediately.
| qecez wrote:
| There's a cool one dedicated to the Lightning Network (Bitcoin's
| 2nd layer): https://stacker.news
|
| Posting, commenting and upvoting each cost 1 satoshi (around
| $0.0003, currently).
| zucker42 wrote:
| This used to be called Reddit. Not so much anymore, since they
| started optimizing for advertisers instead of users.
|
| I don't think there are going to be very many places like
| HackerNews. "Hackers" as a subculture are bolstered by the fact
| that Internet based modes of communication and work (not just
| forums but also things like Github) are seen as interesting and
| productive. Plus the people capable designing such a forum are
| likely to be software people; it's a bit more difficult for a
| skilled mechanical engineer to quickly set up a forum. So it's no
| surprise that many of the forums are software/"hacker" oriented
| (e.g. Blind, Lobste.rs, HN). Any forum built by software
| engineers for other people seems doomed to go the way of Reddit
| rather than the way of HN.
|
| However, I'll give a shoutout for a great community forum that
| I've participated in, and that's ChiefDelphi. But that's super
| niche (it's focused around the high school FIRST robotics
| competition).
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The memes destroyed a large part of reddit's intellectualism.
| Not that it descended to the depths of youtube comments, but it
| was still a fall.
| specialist wrote:
| I just can't imagine why all threaded forums aren't structured
| like HN (and lobste.rs). For the life of me, neither slashdot
| nor reddit has ever made any sense to me. Everything else, less
| so.
|
| The flat (non-threaded) forums have their place. For low
| traffic, low engagement blog comments feedback stuff.
| harshthedev wrote:
| What's the difference between HN and Reddit's thread
| structure? Both are threaded. And I actually prefer the lines
| besides the comments, makes the discussion easier to follow.
| bmitc wrote:
| How is Reddit different from Hacker News aside from the
| existence (basically required due to the size) of subreddits?
| specialist wrote:
| Reddit "smart" collapses subthreads. Sometimes those links
| expand. Sometimes they open new page. Infuriating.
|
| HN does page big threads, which isn't too bad. I'm
| immensely grateful HN doesn't do any silly AJAX style
| background, progressive loading of content.
| mousepilot wrote:
| Really dislike all the new "infinite scroll" stuff.
| laurex wrote:
| I've been thinking about this myself lately. I'd like to create
| something that nurtures curiosity like HN but is more broad-
| based. In considering this, I suspect that moderation is far more
| important than any technical aspect of HN (thank you @dang,
| Scott, et al). There's a challenge when moderation is more
| democratic and fungible.
| hartem_ wrote:
| There's DataTau which is focused on data science
|
| https://datatau.net/
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Elektronauts (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 if they do - and most of the people seem smart and
| friendly. There's quite a lot of good content (if you're
| interested in music production, of course!) - it's the only other
| forum type thing I use really.
|
| It doesn't have the same layout as HN as it uses Discourse (which
| is more like a traditional forum layout, but very nicely done
| IMO).
|
| In theory it feels like Reddit should be the obvious answer here
| but it just doesn't work for me. Too much crappy meme/joke
| content and/or loads of empty threads on more specialised topics.
| Also not a fan of the UI.
| riffic wrote:
| old dot reddit dot com.
| avery42 wrote:
| There's a great extension called Old Reddit Redirect [0]
| that'll always take you to old Reddit, highly recommend it.
|
| Reddit's new direction in recent years has been really painful.
| There's so many great niche communities there that practically
| don't exist elsewhere on the Internet. Unfortunately, if/when
| they get rid of old Reddit and the API for third party apps,
| I'll probably drop Reddit entirely.
|
| [0] Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| CA/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re... Chrome:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
| adamnemecek wrote:
| I think that the op means like 2005 Reddit.
| sink wrote:
| This is something that has been a source of frustration for
| me.
|
| There are many wonderful and incredibly in-depth communities
| on Reddit. They only get that way with substantial investment
| by passionate volunteers who spend the time to moderate,
| create on-topic original content, and cultivate a community.
| Many of these bemoan when they appear on the front page
| because of the sort of attention it attracts.
|
| Yet the direction that Reddit is going with its design and
| new features is all about optimizing drive-by clicks and
| shallow engagements. I understand why. That's more ad
| impressions, and it's more revenue. But it makes the site
| generally insufferable, and I suspect, reduces the quality of
| user-produced content.
|
| And on the subject of content, that is what draws the
| eyeballs, what produces the ad clicks, what drives the
| revenue. Am I crazy to think that there is a complex, nuanced
| ethical relationship between those profiting from the content
| and those producing it? Providing a place to put the content
| has value, little point in creating content if you have
| nowhere to put it. But creating content also has value,
| little point in creating a platform for content if there is
| no content to put there.
|
| You can see this play out in another format on Youtube (which
| for a platform is hell on earth as far as I am concerned,
| even if amazing content can flourish there). At least they
| are able to share revenue with the content creators, and many
| folks make a living creating content.
|
| I don't begrudge Reddit for seeking revenue. I want them to
| not just sustain, but to flourish. And I have no idea how
| revenue sharing would work in the forum medium. And to be
| honest, I don't really care to get paid for the words I write
| there, or the other OC I share. I just want to know what the
| balance is going to lead to. I have no agency over my
| content.
|
| So here's a similar question -- as they continue to push the
| slider further in the direction of more ads and more dark
| patterns, I can't help but ask, how much is enough? Reddit
| users are both producers and consumers. I started using
| Reddit well over a decade ago, and I have a decade's worth of
| content I have given them. Meanwhile, I agreed to give my
| eyeballs to some ads, where the word some has a hazy
| quantification. I get the sense that some number of ads value
| is being ratcheted up. And I never agreed to that. We never
| bargained. I can't get my eyeball time back. But I want my
| content back. The content that Reddit is getting revenue
| from.
|
| I have the same question for paid online newspapers. I'm more
| than happy to pay real fiat money from my credit card or bank
| account for the news. But these news sites, beyond their
| paywalls, still show ads. Tomorrow, will they show twice as
| many ads? Maybe. We never negotiated this. I never saw ads
| mentioned in the rate card. No guarantees were made.
| Measuring the value of the content is qualitative and a
| fool's errand. I can quantify the number, type, and size of
| ads.
|
| I guess the most important question is: do people even care?
| If there was a forum that users (customers) paid for with a
| modest fee, transparently described, instead of some
| exploitative ramping up of ads, would that be an alternative
| that consumers would to choose?
| Tenoke wrote:
| You can just set a setting on reddit to always use old, you
| don't really need an extension if you browse logged-in.
| whycombagator wrote:
| Or teddit[0] " alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy"
| [1]. (It's also much better on mobile than old.Reddit)
|
| [0] https://teddit.net/
|
| [1] https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit
| threatofrain wrote:
| Reddit main page is just comedy and politics. You'll want to
| check out the niches like its Rust community. Other language-
| based communities as of late have favored chat-type
| environments over forums.
| riffic wrote:
| Reddit doesn't necessarily have a "main page". I generally
| don't subscribe to any sub that you would typically see in
| /r/all, and stick with niche subs instead.
| threatofrain wrote:
| If you don't log into Reddit and just visit
| <old.reddit.com>, that's what I mean by main page. Reddit
| has a main page, and you don't have to click anywhere to
| get there.
| co_pilates wrote:
| Anyone know of a "hacker news minus politics and marketing"?
| enz wrote:
| Maybe Lobste.rs.
| co_pilates wrote:
| yes, good stuff, thanks
| polote wrote:
| https://hnblogs.substack.com/ Only non commercial blog posts of
| HN, so no politics or marketing
| co_pilates wrote:
| Thanks looks great
| kennywinker wrote:
| I hate to be that guy, but literally nothing is apolitical. Hn
| minus explicitly political content is is just status quo
| maintenance news.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > 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?
| co_pilates wrote:
| My eyes cannot roll harder, I think they have also gimbal
| locked.
| Strom wrote:
| Where's the politics in discussing which anchor screw holds
| the most weight in drywall?
|
| Saying everything is political removes any meaning from the
| word politics.
| closeparen wrote:
| Drywall? Who would make a house with drywall? In my country
| everyone lives in a stone palace. Americans are so cheap,
| interest rates, unions, Boomers, NIMBYs, short-termism,
| speculation, etc.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| I could easily make an argument for price, availability,
| requirements for local zoning codes.
|
| I like Wikipedia's definition of politics: "Politics (from
| Greek: Politika, politika, 'affairs of the cities') is the
| set of activities that are associated with making decisions
| in groups, or other forms of power relations between
| individuals, such as the distribution of resources or
| status."
|
| Any subject arising from the interactions of people can be
| viewed through a political lens of some sort, but the
| saying you're objecting to is typically used in the context
| of the coded attempt to censor or ignore unpleasant news as
| being "political", which in truth usually just translates
| to "I resent being forced to acknowledge this."
| davmar wrote:
| If you rent, you can't put an anchor screw in the drywall.
| Who rents vs. who owns is political!
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| How many drywall screws? How corrosion resistant must
| they be for any given environment? Why _screws_ rather
| than adhesive or nails?
| mmdoda wrote:
| Why would anybody in this hypothetical thread discuss the
| politics of owning/renting, when that doesn't bring you
| closer to any solution?
| noodles_nomore wrote:
| The old slashdot fork soylentnews.org is still bumbling along.
| criddell wrote:
| So, no discussion of free software?
| co_pilates wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| Ravelry is kind of amazing. Really well run community for
| knitting, yarns, etc.
|
| https://www.ravelry.com
| massysett wrote:
| That takes me straight to nothing but a sign-up page, so it's
| different from HN in a rather significant respect.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I'd love a forum with a commitment to valuable discussion -
| constructive, intelligent, accurate comments. No acting out, no
| unfounded stuff, no trendy or trolling ideas (that don't
| otherwise qualify), no BS. In short, I want something worth my
| time.
|
| HN is the best I've found, but is far from my goal. I found one
| forum that's higher quality, IMHO, but it's for a specific,
| narrow hobby.
| tenfourwookie wrote:
| MetaFilter held that niche for some time. I don't know how it
| fairs today. The moderation was a bit much for me, so I went
| elsewhere. You might like it. I might revisit it again myself.
|
| https://www.metafilter.com/
| [deleted]
| sink wrote:
| cloudynights is a wonderful community for astronomy of all kinds,
| including astrophotography.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| There are specific sports forums (for example) that trump
| anything out there. It's way better than the subreddit. They are
| all out there but the community is self selected, as in, you
| really have to be into that shit to seek such a place out. Anyone
| that finds those places knows exactly where they are, as in, they
| know how 'generic' and 'surface-level' more broadcasted
| alternatives are (subreddits, HN).
|
| Slashdot has your better users at the moment compared to HN. It's
| probably so because who the hell tells anyone about Slashdot now
| days? And any of the new kids would get laughed away usually. You
| just have to know what you are looking for.
|
| Rule of thumb:
|
| Avoid any place with under 25s, they are too lame to converse
| with.
| zpeti wrote:
| If you don't mind right wing politics, retalk.com
| bmarquez wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion, pretty much everything political on
| reddit is heavily brigaded.
|
| A look at retalk's homepage shows similar subforums to reddit
| like /ufc /funny and /todayilearned so it's more of a reddit
| replacement than a niche political forum, HN style.
|
| The discussion appears to be civil as well, but everyone has
| there similar opinions and no reason to argue so that's not
| saying much.
| wjossey wrote:
| Hadn't heard of this so went and looked. The top post is
| literally a photo of Biden that's captioned:
|
| "The left spent four years telling us how dumb Trump is... Then
| they drop this *** on us."
|
| I bleeped out the derogatory language.
|
| That's not right wing politics. That's just childish drivel.
| That looks nothing like a HN for other niches.
| s9w wrote:
| And even that isn't even as bad as HN is "from the other
| side"
| Dylan1312 wrote:
| The headline of this site says "civil discussion" yet the
| current top post is a meme which describes a US politician with
| a slur.
| dorchadas wrote:
| Not quite like HN, but a true old-fashioned forum for language
| learning is 'A Language Learner's Forum'. It branched off from
| 'How-to-learn-any-language' when it went down in 2015 and has a
| good load of knowledge available and more with each post
|
| forum.language-learners.org/
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| For triathlons: the slowtwitch.com triathlon forum.
| quartesixte wrote:
| Would love some recommendations on anything architecture/design
| related that had HN's format (unless the subreddits for those
| topics are as good as it gets)
| brudgers wrote:
| Architecture and design forums don't, in my experience, work.
|
| They attract amateurs.
|
| Amateurs generally repel expertise.
|
| And experts are already busy doing the thing their expert
| at...serving clients.
|
| To put it another way, working architects and designers don't
| have much if any upside from arguing with do-it-yourselfers,
| people who have only heard of FLW, and the general public which
| think of commercial construction as just like their house only
| more so.
| tenfourwookie wrote:
| The artisan bread niche is here: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/
| molecule wrote:
| Lobste.rs is an hn-inspired site and open-source software that is
| also used by other communities.
|
| https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/wiki
| slater wrote:
| Some previous Ask HNs on the topic:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19125674
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23402797
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1225902
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6405700
| brudgers wrote:
| I 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 well informed opinion about most
| of the items on the front page...most people don't even care
| about more than a handful of them even when there is a single
| story dominating it.
|
| Secondly, there is no way to get to the top of HN. While karma
| adds up, HN is a constellation not a heap. The center is YC
| itself with rings of founders in the closest orbit around its
| mass.
|
| Karma itself only puts you in the Oort cloud.
| jancsika wrote:
| > 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 grad student regarding p-hacking)
|
| * geopolitical significance of Wikileaks since its inception
| (did you know humans can lie by _omission_? You did? Anyway,
| let HN concern troll you about it in the form of copy-pasta
| bots once roughly every full moon.)
|
| * cost benefit analyses of Electron (HN almost seems to have
| made a sport out of overestimating the cost of memory and hard
| disk space in the year 2021)
|
| * veracity of traditional news media (like playing duck-duck-
| goose except the goose is some poster quoting the "Gell-Mann
| Amnesia Effect" cocktail story in an attempt to do an end run
| around reading any of the books written by experts on that
| topic)
|
| * how to absolutely position HTML text over the exact same
| position as SVG text. (That was my own Stackoverflow holy grail
| quest, but I'd be willing to bet no one will reply on this
| thread with the right answer.)
|
| I'd love to know what other topics people find here that are
| typically filled with garbage.
| dang wrote:
| There are plenty of pro-union posts here. Of course it's a
| divisive topic, but it's a cognitive bias to see the other
| side as "9 out of 10" (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&
| page=0&prefix=true&que...). Most generalizations people make
| about HN are subject to this sort of distortion (https://hn.a
| lgolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
|
| When put in "unions" into HN Search and look at the recent
| comments (excluding things like SQL and credit unions),
| opinion seems split, with a mild tilt in the pro-union
| direction. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefi
| x=true&que...
| egypturnash wrote:
| I am trying to imagine the reaction an artist or musician would
| get to "Show HN: here is some art I do" and it is at _least_
| 50% "what is this doing here, HN is for programmer/startup
| stuff". I am pretty sure the HN for X, where X is "art" or
| "music", is not HN.
|
| I am also finding myself tempted to do exactly this with
| regards to the graphic novel I drew a few years back, just to
| see how badly it performs.
| brudgers wrote:
| It is somewhat more better than internet points when one of
| my posts gets a "why is this on HN?"
|
| I don't think HN will ever be overrun by original artworks.
| Partly because like most things on the internet most original
| artwork trends a bit forced. Mainly because nothing dominates
| HN. Not even Lisp.
| dang wrote:
| We just got an email from a painter the other day and I
| encouraged him to post his stuff here. We'll see if he does.
| Admittedly he only knows about HN because he's also a
| programmer.
| cheschire wrote:
| 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.
| dioltas wrote:
| I remember the acid house generator, but I missed that
| constellation of samples sounds really interesting. Would
| love to see it if you had a link.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Might be referring to Ishkur's Guide To Electronic Music?
| https://music.ishkur.com/
| cheschire wrote:
| Found it, and after a few months since it was posted, I
| was misremembering the scope of the list; it's
| significantly more than just electronic music.
|
| https://everynoise.com/
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I run a fork of HN that you can find in my list of projects.
| https://status.shawwn.com/
|
| You won't find much discussion there (but feel free to start
| some). Basically, you can submit whatever you find interesting.
| srik wrote:
| I guess why not?
| screye wrote:
| It'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.
| yewenjie wrote:
| Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution |
| Meaningness
|
| https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
| CharlieMunger wrote:
| Ruined? Not always.
|
| For example, investment subreddits are generally very bad, yet
| the Berkshire Hathaway subreddit (r/brkb) is able to keep the
| rot out without becoming an echo chamber:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/brkb/
|
| This subreddit has literally dozens of value investor
| moderators, and the bubbles (cryptocurrency/ARK/Musk) are
| forcibly excluded.
|
| The result is a forum where Buffett's principles of intrinsic
| value (discounted cash flows) and moats, etc., are explored for
| Berkshire and the many connected companies (e.g., Verizon).
|
| Read the live chat history to see.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > But every niche forum that's gotten popular has been ruined.
|
| Really? I'm not sure I agree with this. I feel like if the
| _topic_ itself is niche or requires some baseline level of
| competency to contribute, then it actually resists this
| "crapification" because your average troll just doesn't have
| enough content/info to work with. It's the broader, general
| interest topics, usually that have some intersection with
| politics, that always go to shit.
|
| I mean, I see this on HN itself, where the broad-topic posts
| often end up in a shit show (though thanks to dang the shit-
| level is kept under control), while the posts about specific
| technologies are usually pretty on point.
| [deleted]
| chirau wrote:
| Random question... is hn_throwaway_99 your main HN name or
| you still maintain a main account? I know a lot of folks use
| a throwaways for controversial stuff or for 'anonymity', but
| it seems yours is quite prominent.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Heh - short of it is I originally created this "throwaway"
| account years ago, I just forgot to throw it away. The
| initial impetus was yes, I was commenting on something
| controversial, but then I just forgot/was too lazy to
| switch back to my original account so I just left it.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I would rather ask for geographical and cultural diversity
| (irrespective of topic/field) to such a forum, or even HN.
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