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Here's one [legally crazy] idea: there are some known great commenters here on HN. They write thoughtful comments. I'd think they would be open to having their

Here's one [legally crazy] idea: there are some known great commenters here on HN. They write thoughtful comments. I'd think they would be open to having their good comments reposted on another high-quality community. So, could lobste.rs ask a few top HN commenters for the permission to cross-post their comments from HN? Legally, it would be fine: lobster.rs would get a license, the original poster does own copyright. It's also "clean", if it's done in a manual, selective way. And boom, you get higher quality comments "for free". Would that be completely unfair to HN?

nostrademons 11y ago
It doesn't work unless everyone moves over, and then you basically have a mirrored copy of HN. Imagine that I was one of those cross-posted commenters, and you were not. The comment, as it would show up on lobsters.rs, would start "It doesn't work unless everyone moves over." Uh...what doesn't work? Moves over to where? My comment makes zero sense without the thread context...which is the case with most of my comments. Check out /threads?user=<username> or /newcomments - you can sometimes find interesting discussions that way, but by themselves, the comments are useless.