[moksha256]

FYI I'm about 5 days away from launching Hystoria, a link aggregator limited to items >5 years old.

Idea is to beat hysteria with history. I contend that an unrelenting focus on "breaking" news and hot-takes is what is behind so much of the craziness in today's discourse. So I hope putting a constraint to block that stuff from discussions from the get-go may result in a kinder, more polite, more thoughtful, and intellectually curious kind of community like HN. Or not. It's an experiment.

More on launch post: https://100millionbooks.org/blog/news/introducing-hystoria/

There is no seed content yet and there's a broken link on the header. But feel free to sign up and post! I'm only posting this now because this thread seems highly relevant and it's HN so slightly broken/hacky stuff isn't so taboo :)

https://hystoria.100millionbooks.org/

[oceliker]

I'm sure you thought about this deeply already, but FWIW I think 5 years is a little bit too long. You're basically looking for "timeless" articles, but there are not that many of those on the web; much less so if you exclude the last 5 years. Also, this necessarily eliminates anything related to new scientific and technical advances, which I think are the coolest discussions in HN in general.

[m52go]

I will admit the 5 year timeframe is a bit arbitrary and may need to be adjusted.

With that said, the goal is positively not to replicate HN with discussions of cutting-edge technology and science.

Even in those topics, I think there's plenty to cover in those fields as it related to nostalgia, little-known but significant advancements, unsung heroes, etc.

[dash2]

Interesting. I'm often late to things myself, and think there is value in reviewing things in an "untimely" way. Like, how good is Breaking Bad if you start watching it in 2020?

[m52go]

I always wait to watch TV shows and movies until the hype has blown over and people can actually tell me their honest thoughts...often in relation to other shows they've seen.

Time allows for context that simply isn't possible otherwise.

It's become a huge time-saver for me. And I would say the shows I do end up watching tend to be of higher quality, on average!

[politelemon]

I apply a similar approach to games. It seems inescapable that every new release is already anticipated to be "goty" or "goat" by reviewers merely minutes after they've played it, to cater to high audience expectations.

An additional benefit of waiting, there's usually a sale on!

[captain_price7]

There is r/patientgamers for people like you in case you didn't already know.

[019341097]

My wife recently started watching it, and I’d argue that she’s enjoying it more today in 2020 than I did when I was watching it as the episodes were released.

[giantg2]

The longer I work at my job, the more I am tempted by or appreciate that story.

[briefcomment]

Nice, but I'm worried it'll be too high of a barrier for entry, as date is usually an afterthought in my experience. Seeking things that are explicitly old would be hard.

[m52go]

Let's see. Not everything interesting I come across on the web is a good fit for HN, but when I see something that is, I post it here.

I've found that (at least for me) once a community is strong enough, and my motivation to participate in it is strong enough, it's not hard to participate in it naturally.

[jrockway]

Very good idea! I tried signing up and got a "registration closed" error.

[m52go]

Shoot sorry, I had closed registration while developing. It's open now!

[da_big_ghey]

Ditto. I do, however, appreciate that it is not using recaptcha.

[therealdrag0]

I’ve occasionally thought about writing a script to filter HN for just posts with a year in the title, like [2015]. These throwbacks usually are posted because they have some timeless value.

[konjin]

I started a subreddit like that.

Shortly there after I made it private and only let myself have posting rights because I didn't feel like dealing with actual Nazis posting news about Jews ruling the world from the 30s, or hysterical liberals posting in every comment how everything that wasn't acceptable in 2018 SF was *ist.

Good luck, you're going to need it.

[m52go]

Yeah, I figure that's the curse of any community gaining traction. I expect to have to turn off comments at some point...if that fails I'll just restrict registrations.

In a worst-case scenario, I think the broader 100 Million Books project would still benefit from me and/or a couple of collaborators posting to it alone.

[konjin]

Since you'll own the platform, I did run a mailing list in the 00s that used to charge people $1 per email they sent out. It made the quality of the mailing list astronomical, but it died because it just couldn't scale with the payment systems in place then.

I have no idea what the integration of things like stripe are like today. I imagine it would be much better. Food for thought before you turn off comments.

[m52go]

Interesting, thanks. I actually looked into $1 payments for an adjacent project and the costs are still prohibitive even today. Stripe fees cost something like 30-40% for a $1 payment, and PayPal is only slightly better :/

[konjin]

Huh, that's better than what I was expecting.

I'll need to dig into the apis, but I don't see a reason why this can't work with those rules. I got hit with some ridiculous money laundering laws when I made more than $1k a month and needed to basically get an accounting colonoscopy or incorporate to continue which would have cost a lot more than I was making in a year.

[cush]

5 years? At the speed news is moving nowadays, 5 hour old news is too slow for most social media sites =P

[m52go]

That's the point! But yes the 5 year timeframe is somewhat arbitrary and may need to be adjusted.

[bostonvaulter2]

I'm unclear, are you trying to say that the above idea is poor?