[nicklaforge]

Please, somebody: I'm privy to know as well. I've just visited hacker news asking myself the same. Slashdot by now has become long in the tooth several times over and is ostentatiously geeky and reeks of conspiracy theory; Reddit lacks the level of discourse here. OSNews? Hackaday? 9fans? Lambda-the-ultimate? All are much closer to Hacker News at its greatest, the last probably even greater, but they all require too much baggage of the reader in the way of commitment and even specialization.

Perhaps I'm in the minority regarding my next quibble, but: I don't care about web start-ups. At least, I'm not employed by one, and I don't care to know exactly what Jeff Bezos is thinking __right now__. I like Hacker News for its capacity to impart that fascinating tidbit about technological advances, exciting advances in physics and science, and DIY articles from embedded projects to mathematical nuggets.

Since its decline as an icon, Slashdot is much less interesting than the news section that begins each issue of Science magazine, or any issue of Physics Today. What about Phys.org? Why does it have such a terrible reputation here? Admittedly, the comments were why I always went to Slashdot, and Phys.org comments seem to be made mostly by amateurs and spectators with too much time on their hands (think: armchair Star Trek physicists).

I'm not the only one feeling this way. See these Google Plus posts: https://plus.google.com/116810148281701144465/posts/h95SSbSJ... https://plus.google.com/114765095157367281222/posts/VfmNKPBd...

[edge17]

I agree, though I think the problem is that this community had decided this site was supposed to be above all the noise. Clearly not the case; that's fine, the guys that run in work hard and don't have any kind of bad intentions. I'm just curious where I can read some news where i don't feel like i'm living in the ghetto and gotta make sure my wallet's not being taken advantage of, or living in the hamptons and make sure my intelligence isn't being taken advantage of.

To be perfectly fair, at this point reddit is kinder to my intelligence than this place. Atleast reddit trashes hyperbole with full malice and no class. This place seems to humor it too often.

[nicklaforge]

Every 'news' site that comes to mind aggregates content in some way, and by your comments, you seem to be after news aggregation. On the other hand, I think the good news sites also have a sizable membership that shares a certain expertise. For Slashdot, it might have been Linux. For this site, it seems to be web start-ups. Yet, even people like me, with no overpowering interest in web start-up news (though I'll admit to having worked for one), still find a subset of the discussion of interest, and I'm sure this is a side effect of the high level of discourse.

My point here is that it's difficult to maintain that core membership purely through aggregation instead shared interests and expertise. In other words, the quality really comes from the people involved and not the technology for aggregating external links. For me, my go to discussion group was 9fans, which is pretty quiet these days. If I really wanted to find interesting things to talk about, I'd seek out those involved individuals, who of course haven't gone away, but just moved on to other things. I get the feeling that in the age of Twitter and Google Plus, news will become centered around people, and that aggregation sites will go the way of phpBB.