HN Explorer

Ask HN: Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?

66 points by 65 ↗ HN
I've found Reddit posts and comments tend to appeal toward the average person. It's like I'm listening to pop music while reading Reddit comments - the same thing over and over again. The same kind of averageness that gets tiring and unfulfilling to read.

What I like about Hacker News is the comment and link quality is very high. What I like about Reddit is I can read about any topic I want.

Is there something that combines the two?

46 comments

[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] thread
cpach
It’s really really hard to find sites like this.

You might want to try Metafilter. It’s quite nice. https://www.metafilter.com/

AndrewStephens
I was going to say Metafilter as well. It is very different (culturally) from news.ycombinator but in a good way.
haunter
Metafilter peaked around ~2010 but the quality really went down after the 2016 elections. Months of endless posts about politics and the general change in tone too made me quit, never looked back.
DoreenMichele
When I was there, it was a cesspit of open misandry and hatred for poor people while everyone patted themselves on the back for how Woke and inclusive they were.
MrGilbert
If there isn't something like that - maybe we should build it?
cpach
That’s not a bad idea. One need to think hard about moderation though. Y Combinator has at least one employee who moderates HN. That’s quite expensive.

Moderation can be solved without hiring people, but it’s not a trivial problem to solve.

wan_ala
For a project i am working on, I've thought about egalitarian-based moderation (i.e people vote on moderation decisions, there is no specific 'moderators'). It could prevent admin abuse and make it so that you don't need to hire mods.
andersco
The pre-acquisition version of digg.com had many similar characteristics. The current version, sadly, does not.
altdataseller
That site is basically reddit but just sorting the comments based on scores.

Or searching for a Twitter thread about the topic with a ?

airstrike
https://arstechnica.com

Still very nerdy, but less startup- / CS-focused

7174n6
ARS has returned to its core mission over the past few months which is good. For a while, every other article was Covid related. It was hard to tell if it was a technology or medical website. I'm glad the editors finally figured out who their readers are.
htk
Used to love Ars, but they became too focused on politics (and too biased) so I just gave up on them.
joenot443
TheMotte.org has good discussion, few links.

Lobste.rs has lots of links, less discussion.

floppydiskette
I feel like Lobste.rs is just HN Jr. It’s still tech-based.
hammock
Used to be a part of forums when those were a thing, which they aren’t anymore.

Today, Hacker News is literally the only site I read the comments on. And I find myself reading the comments more than the submissions.

Maybe there are discords that are good, but I haven’t found any yet and I find that app unpleasant to use

rjh29
I assume you've tried Reddit except smaller subs, particularly those that ban image posts? The political content and extremely polarised opinions drop away quickly the more niche you get.
symlinkk
The comments here are just as mediocre and repetitive as Reddit, just written in a way to sound more sophisticated
jesuscript
There aren't enough people on HN to bury what Reddit would classify as a "controversial" comment. Reddit has so many people that anything that swims against the swarm would be deeply hidden unless you specifically use apps to filter by controversial (just means downvotes ~= upvotes). Reddit threads usually read like a circle jerk because the size of the hive mind visually drowns out all counters and contrarians.

HN still seems to have a natural disposition for countering, so it's rare to find a thread where everyone is jerking themselves off agreeing with each other. Not to say HN is a beacon for independent thought, but that at the very least there are two or three hive minds that counter each other.

So yeah, we have two opposing circle jerks instead of just one like Reddit.

zahma
Your comment is the same low-quality and trite drivel that makes Reddit the contest hall for minimal effort shitposting. Why do you need to import it here?
was_a_dev
I'd love there to be one for broader science. HN serves well, but can be hit and miss in the comments depending on the field and it's degrees of seperation from computer science.

More technical topics end up sinking quick without much discourse. This is in contrast to technical computer science items that do the opposite

jschveibinz
https://www.sciencedaily.com/ is good for a quick, broad look at new science articles. I’ve enjoyed visiting that site for quite a while. But it’s curated, ie. not a forum, so no commentary.
bil7
multiple topics, discussed by people who are highly interested in them? Tried 4chan?

In all seriousness, reddit has been declining for years, and I've yet to find anything that scratches the same itch.

reducesuffering
I also recommend other commenters' suggestions of lesswrong.com , bogleheads.org/forum , and metafilter.com

Another that hasn't been mentioned is datasecretslox.com , similar to lesswrong.com and themotte.org in it's rationalist / SlateStarCodex / AstralCodexTen / Scott Alexander background.

tee_0
In 2010 I felt at home on Reddit. I felt like a had an entire world to lose myself in. But now Reddit is hollow and glazed over with mindless political dogma and petty drama. Maybe I’m just getting older too and not really impressed by internet videos.

I remember r/no sleep being this incredible wellspring of enthusiasm and creativity. I remember people raving about Dr who. Can you imagine Dr who being on half the front page now? Reddit was such an important part of my life back then. I feel so lonely without that community. But for years Reddit was dead and I found a new home on HN. Sadly the same thing has happened here. I remember one day a while ago someone submitted a videogamedunkey video and it was sustained on the front page… on HN. That was the day that it truly sank in for me. And in the pst year I have felt so lonely because the internet is just dead…the average person on the sidewalk and the average person on the internet are now literally the same.

The internet isn’t novel anymore. Reddit hive mind isn’t novel anymore. I think the difference between then and now is that people used to upvote, submit and comment with true passion because everything was new and novel and people felt like it was worth the time and energy to take part in something exciting and new. But now it’s all very tired and people are sobered up. Only low effort interaction survives. The pathways of engagement have been well beaten and so everything seems to be the same. No comment is original. These forums have the same deterministic malaise as the rest of the world.

What can be done about this? I would say the only answer is to withdraw into your work and reading because nobody of quality really takes part in Internet forums anymore.

maxwellface
"Eternal September" hasn't yet come for urbit; it's probably still february or march over there
EGreg
How do we join Urbit? What can we expect
karmakurtisaani
I've had this feeling for a while now as well. I still enjoy HN, and try to think of commenting and participation more as just talking to one person rather than trying to score points from the community. That's what eventually destroys these for us, everyone trying to win popularity contests.

At least in HN we still have some interesting people left.

freitasm
I run a website/forum. Probably not as popular as HN but for New Zealand it is a good size. Won't drop link here unless someone asks/says is OK.
rcarr
I came across this 'hacker news as a service' site whilst browsing beta list. Will be interesting to see if it takes off. I'm half tempted to start a Spanish language hacker news just so I can find cool content to practice my Spanish with

https://www.hn.plus/?ref=betalist

hanifc
> I'm half tempted to start a Spanish language hacker news just so I can find cool content to practice my Spanish with

I've been wanting something like this for ages for the same reason!

nokya
There are many... But these communities are typically not advertised as such. Generally, you would be invited or referred to by another member.

How did you discover HN?

kaba0
In the same vein, any other site that focuses more explicitly on CS only? HN is irreplaceable on that count, you really get sometimes the very creator of the thing chine in, but there are sometimes almost a week going by without any “proper” CS-content (I follow basically every “front page” submission through RSS). https://lobste.rs/ comes to mind, but it has very few comments unfortunately. Maybe a tag system could be great, at least this crude.

Oh, and while we are at it, could we list some tech forums for other languages? I spend way too much time lurking around tech forums, and being forced to use another language might make me actually learn it (German in my case).

real_jiakai
Not necessary. Separation of concerns is nice. Sometimes, the combination will make you feel messy.
nunez
I've improved the quality of my Reddit experience significantly by:

- Unsubscribing from all default subreddits (which are mostly time wasters),

- Not subscribing to any subreddits (so that I don't have a front page),

- Using the multireddit feature to create groups of subreddits I like, and

- Using old.reddit.com which emphasizes the text experience more