Is there a non-coders Hacker News website?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2742409

by rcavezza • 15 years ago

22 27 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm not talking about Reddit or Digg (which I frequent) - I'm looking for a similar website with intelligent conversation that isn't centered around software and startups. I'm thinking NY Times, New Yorker, Economist type articles. Can someone share a link?

mrschwabe• 15 years ago

Build it ! The HN community model is simple, elegant and effective. There's no stopping you from adopting this model and applying it to your own niche'.

Of course, a huge factor in HN's popularity is Paul Graham's endorsement / YC hosted arrangement. This is something you won't easily be able to emulate ;)

roundsquare2• 15 years ago

Also quite difficult to get the same level of conversation.

ignifero2• 15 years ago

That. No matter how good the software, its the seeding of the community that's the hardest part.

also HN is heavily moderated

rkalla• 15 years ago

Certainly a good suggestion, but I just laughed at the potential future-irony of him building it, and then suddenly being up to his neck in code, and being back here on HN posting stories about how to scale your startup on EC2 :)

andrewcooke2• 15 years ago

this place is getting closer to that by the day :o( just wait another few months.

more constructively, is there some way to split or segregate this site, so that people don't feel they need to comment on technical articles yet can still be involved (for motivating examples, see the html regexp thread)?

otherwise, no. although metafilter isn't so bad. i had hopes for quora, but when i was there last it was somehow managing to keep a focus on startups while sliding downhill on quality and encouraging cliques.

andrewcooke2• 15 years ago

ps a good source for quality essays/articles is 3 quarks (but no/little discussion). http://www.3quarksdaily.com/

lordlarm• 15 years ago

Definitely a good idea! A site where one can have intelligent and respectful discussions regarding news, publications, articles and essays would be great!

barney54• 15 years ago

And that's what I like Hacker News, even though I know nothing about about coding.

pokoleo• 15 years ago

My suggestion:

1. Add a reddit account. 2. Unsubscribe from all subreddits. 3. Subscribe to the subreddits below: /r/depthhub /r/philosophy /r/Foodforthought /r/math /r/TrueReddit /r/Cerebral /r/TrueTrueReddit /r/MetaTrueReddit /r/TRDump

4. Unsubscribe from ones that you find too spammy/off topic. Subscribe to ones that are also interesting.

Tip: Don't subscribe to ones that you think are funny. It's a slippery slope to crappy articles.

happolati• 15 years ago

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

hexpen• 15 years ago

Math is pretty far down the drain now, I don't know if there is a better one but if you are a math enthusiast r/math has gone to the mob.

This is in comparison to a year or so ago where it was a middle ground between http://mathoverflow.net/ and where it is now.

chrstphrwrght2• 15 years ago

Have you tried http://www.metafilter.com/? It has lots of interesting new links posted every day on just about any topic, and the quality of the comments is quite high. New users have to pay for an account ($5) in order to comment, and that tends to keep people well-behaved.

Vivtek4• 15 years ago

Second that.

z2600• 15 years ago

and ask.metafilter.com is a great place as well.

huherto2• 15 years ago

Well, what makes this place great is the people who come here. I often wish to see discussions about politics by the same people who post here. I guess it is very difficult to achieve because politics tend to attract a lot of crazy people. So as soon as something becomes popular it will be filled with the wrong crowd.

Vivtek4• 15 years ago

Politics makes people crazy. They start out just normal. I have utterly vivid recollections of September 11, 2001 - the world suddenly split into idiots and people that agreed with me. (Mostly idiots, sadly.)

hnal943• 15 years ago

Wow. Way to start a flame war.

markkat3• 15 years ago

http://hubski.com

My site. Still in development, but active. We are pretty eclectic. Join us dammit. :)

EDIT: A bit more info: I built Hubski for the very same reasons: I wanted it to exist. The model is a bit different than HN, as you can follow people and tags, and with the next few updates it is going to be even a bit more so.

But yes, I do think an intelligent general social aggregator is possible and needed. I hope you'll join us. We've just a couple hundred users so far, but the content and discussions we do have are surprisingly quality.

chrstphrwrght2• 15 years ago

Good start! Don't be afraid to increase the font size - my eye sight is okay, but it's not easy for me to read the text surrounding the headlines unless I focus on it.

markkat3• 15 years ago

:) You are probably right. I have a small font bias. Thanks for the feedback. Let me know if anything else strikes you one way or the other.

Vivtek4• 15 years ago

Try Making Light. I can't stress this enough. Their comment sections are unthreaded, but lively. The hosts are science fiction editors in NYC, so that tends to shape the topics somewhat - but only somewhat.

http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/

ignifero2• 15 years ago

Hey, i built this: http://textchannels.com/ some time ago, it even looks a bit like HN!

torstesu• 15 years ago

Check out www.forlue.com --a replica of HN, only but the green theme an non-hacker focus.

Is there a non-coders Hacker News website?

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