HN Explorer

Ask HN: Idea Sunday

7 points by ashwin_kumar ↗ HN
Whoever started it, the intent was good. We should resume Idea Sunday threads. A small HN experiment maybe. Every Sunday, a new thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on.

Links to some interesting Idea Sundays happened earlier:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693262

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9165278

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654771

EDIT: Well, HN admins don't see this adds a good value to HN core. More on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640

11 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 44.4 ms ] thread
weddpros
I need a nice mobile app to share pronunciation of words in various languages. Ask for the exact pronunciation of a word in a foreign language, provide the pronunciation of a word in your native tongue. Build the knowledge base on the go.
minimaxir
Your list omits the valid reason why it stopped: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640
ashwin_kumar
Well, I wasn't aware of this. I will remove my post?
DanBC
The race condition would be easy to avoid by just having a volunteer operating an account. "IdeasMonthly" would post the thread once per month, with a bit of boilerplate.

I'm not strongly advocating for this though - mods are pretty clear about what they think and HN is divided.

krapp
I'll try to advocate for it strongly.

I think that there is already far too much pseudo-intellectualism, cynicism, political sniping and dull rehashing of arguments on this site to begin with. You can pretty much predict where threads about bitcoin, self-driving cars, politics or modern web design are going to go, what sort of arguments will be made, and what counterarguments. One of the problems dang warned about when he discussed killing the regular threads was that regularity breeds low quality. This seems to presume some correlation between novelty and quality that I don't think is really borne out by the content here.

I believe that, while dang was obviously perfectly within his rights to do so, this was one case where he potentially cut off HN's nose to spite its face. Surely, if discussing other people's creative and intellectual efforts is an intellectually valid exercise for Hacker News (which is what commenting on submitted links and articles amounts to) then discussing our own, creative efforts is also valid?

mindcrime
Yeah, they stopped doing them regularly because the HN admins didn't think they added enough value. I tend to disagree and would love the resumption of this as a regular thread, but unless somebody changes their mind, it will probably continue to be shut down.
christopherDam
I also disagree. It should be started again. It is very nice to see what people wants and it creates another ideas which can benefit community. If it is not interesting for someone it does not mean it is not interesting to others.
mapster
Better to have this than not have it. HN admins wants to subcommittee this idea to death. Just to do it.
minimaxir
What? Having something for the sake of having something isn't productive.
swcoders
But have not something sake of few people thought is also not productive. It will be very productive if we can discuss new ideas. It will not give only one perspective to that idea but help others to think other angles for their products. I have read past threads it is very good and fruitful.
DanBC
If these do happen again:

1) A special account should be set up to post the threads (and people should flag the other threads).

2) There should be no more than one thread per month.

I did recently ask about this, and HN staff are reluctant, so I didn't go ahead.

There are websites (half-baked) and there's probably a sub-reddit (and it would be easy enough to create a subreddit).