[Kisil]

His analysis of the difference between the trustee and participatory models is insightful, but he didn't address how what he's building is different from aggregators like HN or reddit. Loosely, it sounds like he's putting together a news-focused forum, which would be different in that its content is hosted centrally. This has been tried; the standard argument against is that the barrier for entry to blogging is so low that anyone who wants to participate already can. Forums work for focused communities, but "news," by virtue of its breadth, seems to defy this type of centralization.

It's not that I'm against it in principle, I just don't get the value proposition.