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Ask HN: What would happen if HN was split into "sub-reddits".

13 points by robbiea ↗ HN
I see two types of articles on HN: Really tech-stuff (MongoDB, NoSQL, scaling x language, etc) and the other types (Pg's essays, opinion articles on apple, microsoft product releases, etc.). I'm sure there are a few more categories that I'm missing as well, but for the sake of this discussion let's assume there are only two.

I would love to be able to filter by the two since I'm really interested in the latter type of articles. Do you think HN is at a point where we need something like this?

12 comments

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duiker101
Less people would use each. On Reddit the topmost posts have around 10k~ upvotes (not karma), a lot of people see them and vote them. But if we then go to see the single subreddits, the ammount of upvotes needed to reach the 2th/3th place can drastically decrease, and so do the users that see that subreddit. And this is for subs that are on the frontpage, if we go to look all the other subs there are some who get just a bunch of posts each day and therefore are harder to sort, you get the same content for days on their frontpage.

Now let's consider HN. The current top post has 317~ points and apart from the posts about Steve Job's death and an earthquake(I don't remember which) you usually have a GREAT post if it reaches 500 votes. And we don't have downvotes (or at least not everyone I think). So, splitting this posts in subs will create a unnecessary fragmentation that I can see will only hurt the community. But I agree we could have something to sort, but I don't see it as a needed thing, therefore I don't see it happening.

ScottWhigham
Your post makes it seem as though you think that, because a subreddit's top posts do not have high karma/votes, that the idea of subreddits is somehow not working or flawed. I disagree - the whole idea of a subreddit is to take something out of the mainstream and put it in a smaller niche. It's of course going to have lower votes because a smaller audience seeks it out. The positive thing though is that, because the audience sought out that source, they are likely to be much more engaged than if they were reading a 10k+ post. There's a lot to be said for the "noise factor" that large posts get (in terms of comments/replies/snark). Smaller, more engaged audiences are not worse; they are just different.

Besides, the subreddits on reddit are of the "Anyone can create a subreddit" variety which, I would assume, is very different from what OP is asking about/for with respect to HN.

mohit_agg
i will really like that. And i think there should be a separate Review Startup or Show HN category as well. I just submitted for the first time for review and it went unnoticed.
DGCA
You posted at ~4am PST and your title was unappealing.
mohit_agg
I thought it's supposed to be of format like

'Ask HN: Review my startup CompanyName'

Anyways, I guess I got the timing wrong. Will post again. Thanks for replying.

mohit_agg
So, I posted again - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4809576

But didn't receive any comments. I think the problem is that there is only a small window to get reviewed before you get out of the newest submissions. There should be separation between feedback requests and news post.

mnicole
Subreddits not so much, but keywords, tags or topics that I could filter with would be immensely helpful.
thdn
Totally agree, I hate to see so many startup trash posts every time.
mnicole
Ditto. As much as people complain about Reddit on here, the exact same effects are taking place and pushing irrelevant content to the top. Worse, this is somehow acceptable, but being lax in the comments isn't. So you've got gossip-blog headlines and people taking themselves way too seriously in the comments, rogue moderators and randomly hell-banned users, and no wonder people leave and feel the need to make a post about how things have changed for the worse.

Obviously whether or not this place exists isn't particularly PG's concern, but in order to foster a community and keep people from leaving that otherwise wouldn't have if they'd been able to filter the noise, something needs to be done. People won't submit content to a site they know it won't be seen on, especially if they're competing with shallow linkbait headlines.

findingfarm
I would love to see this implemented. I started working on my finding farm project for many of the same reasons (it basically organizes content by topic so people can follow what they're interested in). Example:

http://www.findingfarm.com/?topic=startup-advice

I hate the scan - filter - repeat cycle. Even a good tagging system would make a huge difference. Hope it happens.

milkmiruku
I really like how https://lobste.rs/ uses tags for easy topic filtering.

I'd love to see a system that does automatic topic/trend clustering, along side the manual social bookmarking bits. That would be a killer app for attention economy management. Then give the topic or trend or whatever tags (insightful, humour, etc?) dash/wiki pages of their own with Linked Data additions. Or do the automatic clustering after a page reaches a certain number of upvotes or saves.. 2p anyway..