HN Explorer

Non-Hacker News

68 points by mattmaroon ↗ HN
In order to help alleviate the perceived problem of off-topic posts here, I've created a slinkset at http://nonhackernews.com . (And yes, I realize this post is contributing to the problem, but I promise it will be the only one.)

Despite the name being the opposite of this site's you are all very welcome there. My goal is to bring the same level of discourse that this site has to general interest topics. It's a lofty goal I realize, but I think it's possible.

Topics like economics, health, etc. is what it is designed for. The stuff that a lot of people seem to enjoy here, but a lot of other people seem to want to be off-topic.

This is totally a public service on my part, and I'm not putting up ads or trying to capitalize on it in any way. And please don't take this as an attempt at some sort of great schism of the audience here, it's not. I'll still surf this site no matter how popular NHN gets. I'm only trying to make another site that I (and judging by the votes many "off-topic" posts get here, many of you) like to read.

I'm also looking for a few more people to be moderators (I've already got 3 other than myself) since I don't have a large amount of time to put into it. The goal is to keep the the discourse intelligent, civil, and balanced, and without trolls, press releases, spam, and pictures of kittens. I have a feeling that a little moderation will go a long way toward that.

66 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] thread
Alex3917
According the FAQ, anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity is on topic. Does this mean that on-topic for nonhackernews is anything that does not gratify one's intellectual curiosity?
mattmaroon
I meant off-topic in the way that most people who claim things are off-topic mean it, hence the quotes.
Alex3917
I was half joking, I actually did read the FAQ. Personally I would go the other way. I would rather keep the intellectually gratifying articles from the NYT magazine, salon, TED, the new yorker, marc cuban's blog, edge.org, etc. and get rid of the esoteric programming articles and cliche business advice. To me what makes hacker news boring is all the front page articles about erlang libraries and cloud computing.
raganwald
I would rather keep the intellectually gratifying articles from the NYT magazine, salon, TED, the new yorker, marc cuban's blog, edge.org, etc. and get rid of the esoteric programming articles and cliche business advice. To me what makes hacker news boring is all the front page articles about erlang libraries and cloud computing.

This is the direction the HN front page seems to be heading. Maybe you have a lot of kindred spirits!

mk
I would be willing to be a moderator.
mattmaroon
Done. Thanks :)
mk
emkay is my non-hacker news account.
rrf
The creation of a non-hacker news site seems a bit knee-jerk. Would it not have been better to have waited a few days to see how the recent debate has affected the quality of submissions?
mattmaroon
The recent debate is just one out of a number of posts/comments that have been ongoing for months. (I actually like the quality of submissions here.)
rrf
Agreed - on both points. I guess I took the removal of Prakash's submission from the front page to mean: point taken, let's move on.
mattmaroon
I actually almost did this a month ago, but for whatever reason it slipped my mind. That just kind of reminded me.
ojbyrne
I was writing a comment of my own till I found myself using the phrase "knee-jerk" ;-). The challenge of "social news" is pretty well like the challenge of open-source -- how to keep communities together long enough to create something great.
mk
"And please don't take this as an attempt at some sort of great schism of the audience here, it's not. I'll still surf this site no matter how popular NHN gets."

It didn't seem to me a knee jerk reaction to the quality of submissions, but rather a public service because people are understandably complaining about political posts being made that are not "hacker news".

jotto
I think the problem has more to do with sarcastic comments - people take them personally and start useless wars, and then memes.
doubleplus
Yeah, people totally take them "personally"and start "useless wars."
Harkins
The recent debate was killed. People who did not happen to log in during the right couple hours in the US morning didn't see it.
kyro
I think it's a good idea. It'd be cool to see the same people here express their views, share ideas, etc. on topics other than programming/business.

I have time to moderate. My email is in my profile.

mattmaroon
If you sign up an account there I'll upgrade it.
kyro
I'm in.

Btw, are you raising any capital?

mattmaroon
Ha, not for that site. It's just for fun. Slinkset may be though, I don't know. And if we become a burden on them, I might toss up a donation jar and/or some unobtrusive ads to cover their expenses.
alaskamiller
Reddit?
mattmaroon
But with the very key addition of moderation.
alaskamiller
I actually wish someone just throw up a vbulletin install for all the off-topic discussions. That's really what people want. All these Ask YC/HN stuff, people wanting profiles or avatars, etc.
mattmaroon
I'm really aiming for something else. No Ask YC kinda stuff.

You're right though, that stuff is very forum-like.

whatusername
DMCA Safeharbour?

Not that there's much to sue --> But my understanding is that say if someone put up the HD DVD key - if you moderate - then you lose the "it wasn't us - it was the users" defence.

13ren
subreddits have moderation

But I like slinkset - and its UI is more like oldschool HN than web 2 reddit.

nickb
I have a biz/financial news site that used to be for my personal use but everyone's welcome to sign up and use it. It's running Arc + HN forum soft. It's still heavily beta as I use it as a testing ground for some AI/NLP stuff that I'm writing in Arc.

I dig out a ton of great links but only a fraction are god for HN, hence a new site for biz & finance. In my past life I used to work in finance so I'm still attached to that field. I am also trying to round off some of my business knowledge as well and there's really no good business sites out there that have stuff that's past the 'news' category.

Enjoy: http://www.newmogul.com/

j2d2
I am patiently waiting for a network to grow here. So far it's mainly nickb and I've had a post.

I don't think there is an equivalent to this, but the name might be a turn off for some. There are many great minds not totally interested in turning into a mogul. They might see themselves as already being moguls and thus think this site is a place for n00bs.

nickb
Agreed. It's a shitty name but I had the domain for a while and it was supposed to be used for something else. When I started looking for a domain to bring the site up, I couldn't find anything so I ended up using this. Oh well.
j2d2
I think bear.com should be free soon. Maybe lehman.com.
rantfoil
Slinkset rocks! This is a perfect application of a totally amazing piece of software.
mattmaroon
I am most impressed at how easy it is to set up. I'm having some problem with the domain names, but it might by my fault or dynadot's.
rantfoil
Wait 24 hours and it should be all kosher. DNS is always a PITA.
mattmaroon
It wasn't DNS, since I'm using the registrar's and just doing a CNAME entry, so I never changed nameservers. It actually had something to do with a cookie apparently. Now it all seems to be working fine.

There was something about the redirect looping. I have so little clue about that stuff. Either way though, it's not a slinkset problem.

kcy
Two suggestions - totally personal, so curious what other's think: 1) get rid of the front page dominating "welcome", I think it's unnecessary and annoying - people will click on the link and read more if they want to.

2) make the interface exactly like hacker news. For instance I think the bold titles is a bit distracting, esp after navigating over from hn.

3) one of my favorite features of hn is that I can often just type "n" into my browser address bar and the browser autocompletes to news.ycombinator.com. This is particularly useful on my mobile. Would be cool if the name of non-hn had some similar sort of name that leveraged autocomplete.

newt0311
Firefox has a (to my knowledge -- undocumented) bookmark keyword feature which allows assigning keywords to bookmarks. These keywords can then be typed into the location bar and firefox with automatically load the bookmark. The keyword input box only pops up when you right-click on the bookmark and go to properties. This along with the search keywords probably account for ~40% of my speed when surfing. (tabs account for a lot of the remaining 60%).
LogicHoleFlaw
I assigned the letter 'b' to my corporate bugzilla. Now my coworkers wonder why I seem almost psychic when it comes to remembering the details of a given bug.... typing 'b 17084' is a fantastic way to pull up bug 17084. I've got shortcuts for wikipedia and google as well.
gills
Thank you. I have found myself in an odd spot, enjoying the economic and political discussion but trying not to lower the S/N by fueling the fire with submissions.
aj
Checking it out.. But why are the contents of the welcome post on the front page itself?

Ps. I can be a moderator if you still need another one. Id: Anant

mattmaroon
Not sure. I thought it would put the link there and then the text once you clicked it, but that's how it behaved.

At least it should be gone soon.

brett
The welcome post only has its title on the front page now. Before we didn't have an option for descriptions to not show up on the list pages.
boredguy8
"Not" doesn't have much appeal. Good luck, though!
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bootload
"... I've created a slinkset ..."

Tried it but having trouble putting a non-hackernews article. Also noted if you have a slinkset login, you should be able to login straight away.

rgrieselhuber
I think it's a cool idea. Hackers tend (IMO) to take a gestalt view on the world which makes them naturally interested in much more than just programming and startups. If HN isn't the place to satisfy those needs, I don't mind seeing someone else give it a go.
hs
I don't mind about off-topic posts since what i'm looking for mostly is short, witty / insightful comments

for example, pg may not comment on obviously "hacker" stuff like php thread, but he might on 'non-hacker' posts like healthy food, stock market, etc

that's why i avoid (skimming) posts with php, python, ruby, windows, linux, gnu, oss, fsf, mac, osx, apple since the probability that i get great comments is approaching zero [over time]

Yes, there's a "comments" link up there, but i still have to manually search

My suggestion is that hn to have an alert icon where the list of my favorite "thought leaders" comment on the post - think about gmail's star

so if a post has a star next to it, then maybe pg and some thought leaders comment on it ... that post could be interesting

"always take the harder path" ... commenting is harder than upvoting

netcan
Would all of this "off-topic" go away if there was a reddit like check box for topics in the settings, HN & NHN that users could turn on/off. That way, a user can just turn off all NHN.

Sealing these two off with two different sites seems a bit much. Are strictly HN people so offended by NHN that they want it of there GD site altogether.

ajkirwin
Now this is what I was hoping for!

registers

edw519
not nonhacker news

(I've been waiting 580 days to say that.)

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raheemm
I like the mix of hacker and non-hacker stuff on HN. I would hate to see it become all technical - I mean, we do tech all day long, its nice to venture out and read what else is going on.
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TFrancis
I appreciate the effort you've expended to setup a new news site but, I'm unlikely to ever venture there. If in fact, this act betters Hacker News, I'm even less likely to venture there.
yters
Pretty smart, I think this effectively solves the problem. Now, you get the HN readership without the risk of attracting people who just want to knee jerk vote and promote their pet causes.

I also volunteer for moderating.

yters
Would it work to make NHN a superset of HN? Then people going to NHN can still participate in HN easily. Otherwise, you might create a migration.
BrandonM
Great! Now when someone feels that a submission here is not Hacker News, they can submit it to nonhackernews and reply to the submission here with the link.