HN Explorer

Ask HN: Which online communities do you hang out most on?

70 points by sellingwebsite ↗ HN
Couple of my favorites:

* https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians - All things history. Quality of discussions are way better than on most other subreddits. Highly moderated

* https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm - bootstrapped businesses

* https://lobste.rs - kinda like HN but for tech only

* https://slatestarcodex.com - it is more blog than a community, but great nevertheless

I used to frequent other communties but these are the ones that stood the test of time

30 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 17.3 ms ] thread
vijaykodam
Apart from HN, reddit my new favorite is https://dev.to
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byproxy
I like the bold design, though I find it a tad too large and low-density. Also, a shame you can only log in with a Twitter or Github account.
avgDev
HN mostly. The quality of discussion is much higher than reddit. Also, there seems to be less group think here.

I have yet to find an online gaming community that I enjoy. I tried different discord servers but it is nothing like good old clan forums back in the day, where you got to know people.

Akinato
Honestly, I find the limited user base helps a lot too. You can read all the view points without scrolling through thousands of jokes.
lui8906
The jokes and memes make most reddit subs almost completely useless for real discussion. Even on tragic news events and serious topics jokes tend to float to the top.
dlphn___xyz
what are some active programming boards? (not reddit)
throwaway_bad
I don't like /r/programming either but some of the smaller programming subs are ok.

For example /r/cpp has moderators from the actual C++ standards committee.

In general I wish there's a better way to stalk where these experts hang out. For example at one point /r/machinelearning was pretty good but then the famous researchers left and it's hard to track the diaspora (I think those discussions ended up moving to twitter)

throwupnew
started browsing some of the smaller collaborative reddit communities like /r/ProgrammingPals. It's been a cool way to find other devs to collaborate with.
mindcrime
HN mostly. There are a handful of subreddits I check periodically. /r/artificial, /r/AGI/, /r/machinelearning being some of the top ones. Some StackExchange sites, like ai.stackexchange.com, electronics.stackexchange.com, ham.stackexchange.com, and so on.
lethologica
Hacker News and a few Subreddits of whichever hobby I'm interested in at the moment. I do miss the old days of forums, though. HN and Reddit both don't seem to give me the same feeling for some reason I haven't figured out yet.
Akinato
Old forums used to feel a bit like a community. They were small and close nit, and visibility wasn't dictated by voting, so proper in-depth discussions could happen. They felt more like a collaborative room than a megaphone.

At least, that's my thoughts.

NeedMoreTea
They also didn't "age out" every discussion to invisibility after a day or two, as usually sorting was usually by time of last update. Discussion topics could go for weeks, or occasionally months.

Losing that is my personal bugbear with everything moving to a feed, as it prioritises consumption over depth.

Deimorz
(Disclaimer: my site)

I definitely agree with this, and on Tildes (https://tildes.net) the default sorting method causes topics to bump back up to the top when there's a new comment on them, the same way forums work. We regularly have topics stay active for days or weeks because of it, and old topics will suddenly spring back to life when new discussions start.

Tildes's mechanics have a lot of similarities to reddit/HN-style sites overall, and you can still choose to sort by votes, strictly chronologically, etc. if you prefer, but I've always liked that forum-style method. The heavily time-dependent approaches that are popular now force everyone to need to reply quickly. On HN and reddit, if you don't get involved in a thread in the first 12 hours or so, you might as well not bother because it'll disappear soon. Replying to anything over a day old means that almost nobody will ever see your comment.

Tildes is still young so it's not extremely active yet, but there are usually a few hundred comments and ~50 topics every day. If you (or anyone else reading this) is interested in an invite, feel free to email me. The address and a lot more info about the site is in the announcement post: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes

NeedMoreTea
It's the cult of recency that even infects Google search. Last week's news can still be worth talking about, last year's fact might still be a fact. HN and reddit also has the tendency that a lively discussion will simply start to fade out once the story has dropped out of sight.

Nice one, Tilde looks a really interesting mix. Votes are useful as a pre-filter in discovery, age the best way to organise discussion. I wish you the very best of luck with it! Bonus points for the dark theme option.

From first impression it looks fit for beta - is there functionality still missing? I'll take a closer look over the weekend.

Deimorz
It probably doesn't even really need to be called alpha/beta any more. It's very stable and has comparable or better features than most of the similar sites. There's a lot I still want to add, but there always will be.
Fjolsvith
One thing I didn't like about Tildes was being banned without notice by the moderator.
siruncledrew
> They were small and close nit

That's my growing problem with Reddit (and somewhat HN). There's actually a fallacy to "the more, the merrier". As some of my favorite subreddits have grown and seen a lot more crossover users, it's become way less merrier of an experience. Like having a favorite swimming spot or nice hiking trail get inundated with people - it changes the dynamic of doing something. In my opinion, it leads to the "generalization" of subreddits, where dumb posts are the new average and the "uniqueness" of the subreddit gets lost.

Idk, to me it seems inevitable that "grow, grow, grow" the userbase is going to have some detrimental effects to the nature of a community. Maybe it's all wishful thinking at this point, but "small and close nit" sounds better of a community than "extra-large and individualistic".

Zoo3y
Many of my friends use Twitter and we regularly comment on and retweet each other's tweets. I've recently been added to a Mastodon group which feels much more tight-knit. I've been playing dota 2 for the past few years and I regularly play with the same group of people. I also have a few discords I've been added to. I tend to lurk on bigger websites like Twitter, Reddit, HN. Last.fm and Sonemic community are interesting in that they're entirely music based. The discussion revolves entirely around rating and categorizing music which is lovely if you think about it.
ChefboyOG
HN mods do a fantastic job with moderating. I don't pretend to know how any of it works, but I consistently enjoy content on the front page of HN, which I can't say about subreddits, even my favorites.

Besides HN, a handful of subreddits (r/MachineLearning in particular), and I used to spend a decent amount of time on Product Hunt.

I do miss the hell out of forums though. I feel like i "knew" everyone on a better level and could burn through hours talking.

ok_coo
Reddit for gaming. HN for tech stuff. I lurk a lot on both platforms and don’t like to comment too much.
maxmonlt
HN mostly in the past 4~5 years.
vinrob92
Productized Startups - a fb group I started just to talk about about productized services.