Ask HN: HN is gone, now what?

[Cocktail]

In a hypothetical scenario where HN would disappear for whatever reason more or less permanently, what alternatives would there be? Where someone could find similar quality of commenters?

[h2odragon]

The replacement*s* would not arise until after the original died; if that was a sudden and final thing then they'd pop up quickly and try to transplant the community as a first focus. If it changes more subtly then there's a long process of new communities growing and nothing quite like the original ever happens again.

[yogthos]

Set up a [Lemmy](https://github.com/LemmyNet) instance.

[another_story]

They still have the hard-coded "slur" filter?

[gurchik]

No, it's completely configurable

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1773

[another_story]

That's good. I remember reading years ago how they weren't going to remove it. Glad they left it up the server admins to make the call for their communities.

[Amfy]

great question. following.

maybe bring good old'school forums back. man, i miss those times.

[aaaaaaaaata]

Nobody's really built a new one in a while.

One with a strong, mostly fresh take on mobile access would be super interesting.

[solardev]

I've found an amazing community (generally not techy though) at boards.straightdope.com. Some smart folks and interesting topics from all sectors of life.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

I started on digg, hackaday and slashdot, before moving here when those services crumbled (afaict had is still going strong, my interests changed a bit though!

I think if yc fell, communities may segregate a bit into different interest groups.

I’m sure there’s a few yc quality subreddit’s also, If you can stand the user hostile ux

[ehhhhhhhhh]

This is similar to my experience. Slashdot, digg, reddit, then HN. HN hasn't really declined (I think I matured) but I still find some nuggets.

I'd like to see a group like early $PLACE on something like IPFS or whatever to keep the bar high enough.

[LordDragonfang]

>If you can stand the user hostile ux

old.reddit.com is still available, which is only slightly user hostile. There's a setting to default to it if you're logged in, otherwise it's pretty trivial to either install an extension or write a userscript to automatically redirect you to that subdomain.

[brigandish]

There's also Teddit[1], which I use most of the time I want to look at Reddit now. It's been discussed on HN before[2].

[1] https://teddit.net/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25310206

[FractalHQ]

That is one of the slowest websites I’ve ever tried to use! Too bad to, because it’s a great idea.

[Markoff]

what would be those subs?

at least on mobile you can use Boost or Sync, but on desktop it's more difficult, really only old.reddit.com and experience is vastly inferior to mobile apps

[dopa42365]

become a /g/entleman

[unraveller]

make orange site good again

[vorpalhex]

Libera.chat since I assume most of HN is also on IRC

[dan-robertson]

I would be surprised if that were the case

[tomjen3]

IRC is pretty terrible. No logs, no persistant names, no way to catch up but to spend hours looking at text.

[gaws]

> No logs, no persistant names, no way to catch up but to spend hours looking at text.

A bouncer solves these issues.

[BayAreaEscapee]

Woohoo! I just got back an hour of time every day, just as if a day had 25 hours instead of 24.

[dorkwood]

I think the hours I spend here go towards satisfying my need to feel part of a community. Without it, I suspect I'd spend the same amount of time on another social media site.

[dandanio]

Maybe start an NNTP server?

[slater]

lobste.rs

[romellem]

Interesting, I haven’t heard of this before. It seems like to create an account to you an invite?

[glouwbug]

You can ask around, I'm sure someone will be kind enough to send you one. I've personally never received one but I would like one

[kayodelycaon]

One issue with lobste.rs invites is they are a mechanism to vouch for a person. Whoever invited you will show up in your public profile. So there’s a reputation risk if you invite who later gets a lot of negative attention. (Which is why I’ve yet to invite anyone.)

Edit: Here is the text for that.

Invitations are unlimited, but persons you invite will be associated with your account in the user tree and you may be responsible for them if they cause problems. Please use your discretion when inviting persons you don't personally know.

[glouwbug]

Guess I wouldn't want to be responsible for an internet stranger's defamation. I'll keep shit posting on HN

[gysfjiutedgj]

squid blog

[arthurcolle]

lobste.rs

[vyrotek]

Looks great. Would love an invite.

[Jaruzel]

I can invite you, let me know if you want me to?

[vyrotek]

Thanks, managed to get one.

By the way, your Amiga collection is amazing. My dad and I play with his collection once in a while. So many great games!

https://twitter.com/vyrotek/status/1479932078267396100

[arthurcolle]

I gotchu, send me an email or something, you can find it on my profile: https://lobste.rs/u/arthurcolle

[vyrotek]

Thank you! Accepted.

[Markoff]

seems entirely focused on devs as if people didn't work in other tech fields

[thiht]

Can’t we have a community just for devs?

[Markoff]

sure you can, but don't claim it's alternative to HN

[thiht]

Depending on how you use HN, it can be. Some people are here for the technical topics.

[Markoff]

yes and for those people lobsters ain't HN alternative, because it's narrowly focused on developing/coding, not general technical topics

[dlisboa]

Lobste.rs. It's much more focused on tech/programming and the discussions there (although very few comments) often lead me to discovering new things.

Although that part of it also sucks a bit because you can't comment if you're not an invited member (which I'm not).

Many of the articles are found on HN first, but some are easier to see there because the front-page doesn't change as much as HN.

[h4waii]

Drop an email in your HN profile, I'm sure someone will send you an invite.

I find the quantity of comments on lobste.rs to be lacking compared to HN, they are much higher quality but there's not a lot of discussion for some reason.

[jart]

I think part of it is Lobsters has an "average karma per comment / post" feature which means Lobsters users usually don't post a lot of "wow!" or "thank you!" comments and instead prefer to speak up when they feel something substantive is meriting attention. I've posted threads there that were #1 for a day and got like two comments. I've seen other smaller threads I've posted explode with comments when, for instance, there was a weakness in my project's design. It makes Lobsters a hard crowd to please, although the important thing to understand is they actually still love you. The website design just has different incentives for discussion.

[jorvi]

> but there's not a lot of discussion for some reason

I mean... this is directly related to accounts being invite only.

It's a bit of a catch-22, the less friction to comment, the lower the quality but the higher the quantity.

Generally (let me preface: I do like HN as a whole) I dislike vote based or algorithmically driven discussion platforms. Vote based eventually ends up with the site having a certain inherent 'culture', and any comment not fitting in will at most get mildly upvoted and usually just ends up downvoted and collapsed / greyed out. Algorithmically driven, the engagement factor eventually just crowds out any other metric for valuing comments.

I like the setup of image boards (discussion boards?) the most. By default, everyone comments anonymously. Votes don't exist. There is no way to gain reputation points. Your post or comment stands on its own merit. Boring or (most) bait interaction get ignored whilst high quality interaction gets bumped to the front page more often. (Don't let 4Chan's two most infamous boards color your opinion for most other boards)

My personal perfect platform would be the imageboard way for content valuation and Reddit's old UI / UX.

[ShamelessC]

Funny to see a complaint about comment quality when your comment is effectively a restatement of what parent comment said.

Not trying to be rude of course, I do this myself occasionally (my editing skills are bad on mobile in particular), but to me it’s obvious that fewer comments increases the signal-to-noise ratio.

[mod]

I consider your critique of the comment entirely invalid, given that he didn't complain about quality, he complained about quantity.

He complimented the quality.

[ShamelessC]

Ah! See what I’m saying? Humans are poor commenters, can’t escape it.

[h4waii]

Indeed the irony is not lost on me, but main purpose was to get a way for invites to be sent those who want 'em.

[dlisboa]

Hmm, just did that, thanks. Been a while since I last saw my profile here, didn't realize I didn't have anything on it.

[SaulJLH]

Can I haz invite too, please?!?

[htk]

I would also welcome an invite to lobste.rs if anyone is able and willing to send me one. My contact is in my profile.

Thanks!

[thiht]

Just sent you one, enjoy!

[htk]

Excellent, thank you!

[1123581321]

Lobste.rs would probably further restrict invitations to protect against a flood of new users.

[waynesonfire]

artificial scarcity, classic marketing scheme. i'd move along.

[1123581321]

I know what you mean, but I think many of their users really would prefer the site be ignored by most of the Internet.

[amelius]

> Lobste.rs

Isn't that for Rust users only?

[slater]

Actually only for people currently living in Serbia.