HN Explorer

Ask HN: Where would you go if HN shutdown for 1 month?

33 points by leak ↗ HN
From all the talks about HN lacking in many areas for some users, I was wondering where HN folks visit for quality content/comment/userbase?

Side question: Would you come back if it shutdown for a month?

56 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] thread
elssar
Where would I go if HN shutdown for 1 month - reddit

Would I come back - definitely!

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
benologist
Don't know where I'd go but I didn't "come back" to many forums, slashdot, digg or reddit when whichever one of us outgrew the other.
cyphersanctus
I'd go to Reddit but reluctantly. Frankly I dont know of a good HN replacement. I'd certainly be coming back each day to see if it's no longer down.
rkwz
r/programming is good
drivebyacct2
No. It's not. Within the last two days, a comment was upvoted which implied that a VM like the JVM was the same as a virtualization platform such as Xen or KVM.
lutusp
Upvoting on Reddit may not necessarily reflect the popularity or acceptance of a particular view. There are various ways to game the Reddit voting system. This is not to suggest that a given Reddit forum has a quality level above what its voting patterns suggest.
davidw
Also, there is a lot more of the "you're a fucking idiot" attitude on display on Reddit. Mistakes like the one you cited do get downvoted and called out here, but generally, you don't hear the "comic book guy" voice when reading them out loud.
daledavies
I would be forced to go back to work :-(
olog-hai
I would go to a site where people know that "shut down" is spelled with two words.
jgrahamc
According to Merriam Webster 'shutdown' has been used to mean the cessation of activity since 1888 at least: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shutdown, although M-W only has it as a noun.

Collins lists verb versions as well: http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/shutdown

OUP also has it: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/shutdown

paul_milovanov
Usage of "shut down" is more prevalent and has a longer history in English, although "shutdown" is also correct and has entered wide usage at the beginning of 20th century.

Google NGram Viewer ftw: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=shutdown%2C+shu...

(Notice the cool bump for "shut down" around 1940s: apparently lots of things were being, ahem, shut down.)

gioele
Doesn't "shutdown" work like "login"?

"To shut down", "To log in" are verbs. "I will shut down my computer in 10 minutes", "Click on the key to log in".

"Shutdown" and "login" are action nouns. "The shutdown happened at midnight, two hours after the planned deadline", "A problem occurred during the login phase".

If that is the case, grand-parent would be right: the correct phrase should be "if HN shut down for one month" (cfr. "after HN shutdown").

PS: obviously I am not a native English speaker.

tzaman
Nowhere in particular, but I'm sure as hell my productivity would boost :)
shanelja
I couldn't agree more, I waste countless potential working hours 'learning' on HN that if this site closed down, I would probably cure cancer, invent "the new X" and single handedly save the world in the first week with the spare time I would have.
tzaman
Keep lying to yourself, I bet we'd find another distraction to justify procrastination :D
shanelja
I couldn't agree more, I know that once I've read all of HN (which is really to say the first 5 or 6 pages of top stories and new) I tend to head over to Reddit or chat to someone on Skype or Facebook.

My day seems to be divided between minor distractions to keep me working, it's no wonder I'm behind on my work!

xiaoma
It might very well lead to saving the world... of warcraft.
eranation
I'm actually thinking of writing a HN blocker that will count my HN time spent, and block it if it exceeds a certain configurable amount...
sprobertson
This is a built in feature of HN, you know...
eranation
No I don't, I'll look it up, thanks
eranation
Best tip I got in ages, turned noprocast on Thank you...
ojiikun
Despite going downhill continuously for half a decade, slashdot still gets the job done for about 50% of the big stories that come thru HN.

For more startup-ish news, TechCrunch and GeekWire.

wilfra
Quora.

Or I might actually get some work done.

rdl
Quora and my facebook friends. Maybe a little bit of twitter with a select set of people. A few private mailing lists. Some private IRC channels.

Same/better discussion (on the private lists), but not generally driven by media articles.

Probably would come back after a month, but not after 3 months.

AYBABTME
I fall back to reddit/programming when I don't find anything interesting here. I'd go there waiting for HN to come back, as I find r/p to be of lesser quality than HN.
[dead] johnconroy
/r/programming and /r/technology
lutusp
Can I ask my own question? Is this more than a hypothetical inquiry?

> Would you come back if it shutdown for a month?

1. Yes.

2. That's not what "shutdown" means. "Suspend" is closer to the apparent meaning.

leak
I'm more interested in seeing if there is something else out there. I haven't figured out why I haven't really found anything else I like so I'm asking what you like.
shanelja
I often wondered if there was an alternative to HN, for when it goes down unexpectedly or I want a change of scenery, but I haven't as yet found a suitable site.
lutusp
The truth is there are few options that have HN's quality level, for various reasons, one being its relatively small following.

At risk of igniting controversy (or generating more heat than light), I might rank social media sites this way, from worst to best:

4Chan | Digg | Reddit | Slashdot | HN

Reasonable people may differ, of course. But I think there's little controversy over the idea that, when a site becomes popular, its quality necessarily declines -- unless there are barriers to membership.

masanqi
Wow, the real Paul Lutus is on Hacker News. :)
marknutter
I certainly wouldn't miss people pedantically correcting grammar.
lutusp
> I certainly wouldn't miss people pedantically correcting grammar.

If the wrong word is used, one that doesn't mean what's intended, then a correction isn't pedantic.

marknutter
It's pedantic if most people generally get the idea.
slav
I'd go on vacation or do more work ;) and sure I'd come back after a month!
arethuza
Given all of the recent discussions about problems with HN I wonder whether there would be any positive effects of actually choosing to shut it down for a month?

I would certainly come back if it did shut down for a bit.

terhechte
I'd currently go to app.net. Finding news is more difficult, but the threads / discussions there are of really high quality too.
Kilimanjaro
Still waiting for nReduce News, or nN in short.
hooande
#startups on freenode, and I would be back as soon as possible.
nshankar
Isn't it ironic that we have come to only 2 alternatives to Hacker News when there are zillions of websites? Can this be a possibility of another website?