4 ms·

Well, what need of yours is not being met? Let's start with the problem you're having, and build something that can fix it. I'll even help you with the coding.

by antics 16y ago

Well, what need of yours is not being met? Let's start with the problem you're having, and build something that can fix it. I'll even help you with the coding. :)

jackowayed 16y ago
The need that I think we're identifying is that often you need to find good info about, say, the ins and outs of raising an angel round. There's lots of great info on HN but it's scattered about among many threads. So you can't just go to wiki.ycombinator.com/angel-round and find out everything you need to know. You have to search, sift through the results ignoring false-positives (say, comments that reference raising an angel round but don't tell you how to raise one), etc. So I guess the simplest way to state the need is that we need an easy way to access the wealth of high-quality information that's on HN. One solution is a wiki that structures a (hopefully high-quality) subset of that information. The best solution, were it feasible, would probably be a super-"smart" search engine where you could query "How do I raise an angel round?" and it would understand the query and scan HN's comments and submitted articles (since I'm sure people have submitted articles that give tips for raising an angel round) and return a lot of information that it has determined applies, is high-quality, and covers all of the issues thoroughly. But if you can write that, you should be applying it to the entire web and making billions, not just using it to search HN ;) So that's an example of a solution that would be better. Which means it's clearly worth spending some time considering whether there are feasible solutions that are better than a wiki.
- mryall 16y ago
  Perhaps just adding a search box to the HN header or footer would help? It would certainly be better than clicking through to Google, then clicking to enter some search terms, then browsing a list of results on a completely different site.
  - jackowayed 16y ago
    The problem really is that googling with site:news.ycombinator.com or using Search YC isn't a very good approach. Using my raising an angel round example again, say you search "raise angel round" http://searchyc.com/raise%20angel%20round http://searchyc.com/raise%20angel%20round. The results suck. There's an Ask HN that could have been good except that it has no responses. There's an article that sounds potentially useful, except that the link no longer works. And then there's also a lot of things like "Tweetdeck raises an angel round." "Posterous raises an angel round." Totally useless in this case.
- antics 16y ago
  The main problem I see here is that, even if a wiki wasn't too nebulous a solution to this problem, it is almost certainly perceived as one. Do you want to keep up Yet Another Wiki(tm)? Because I sure don't. But besides that, it actually probably is too nebulous a solution. Wikis are great for well-defined, discrete quantities, e.g., Princess Diana. You can define it, tell what happened, etc. How do you do the same for an article like "Raising Angel Investors"? You don't, and hence people write articles about it instead. In response to a comment by the OP [see below, or http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1618744 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1618744], I proposed that we simply start by addressing the problem in the most basic terms we can, i.e., an HN faq or thereabouts, much like Reddit's Programming faq [http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/programming http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/programming], but I'm very open to suggestions, and -- as an enthusiastic denizen of this community -- I'm also completely willing to help with the legwork required to make a plan that doesn't suck come to fruition.
jdc 16y ago
We have good information, but not good structure. Structure encourages high-quality contribution and eases querying of the information.
- antics 16y ago
  I admire your initiative, but "structure" -- at least as you describe it here -- is not a problem. It's a solution to the problem of organizing content. Don't you think? The question is, are Wikis the best answer to this problem? They're really very good at helping us categorize things that are very differentiable, and very definable. For example: The Hundred Years War make a good article in a wiki. "How to raise angel investors" does not. Instead, people write articles about it, and you take what you want out of them. Why don't we start with an HN faq, much like the Reddit programming faq [http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/programming http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/programming], and if that's successful, we can build from there. My philosophy is: address specifically the problem that you (or someone) has (i.e., "I have questions, and don't know where to begin!"), because spreading out too much or being too ambitious can literally kill a project. Don't take my word for it: the svn guys talk about how those sorts of projects were the "worst" parts of SourceForge: [http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/MythGeniusProgrammer.html http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/MythGeniusPro... <-- somewhere in there] So let's start with a specific need and address that. Once again, I'd be happy to help you if you elect to go forward, but we need to attack one thing at a time.
  - jdc 16y ago
    I actually have no attachment to structuring this information as a wiki, but I know of no better readily available, collaborative information sharing software. Problems of structure (front or backend) and organizing the content are the inseparable in my mind.

by antics 16y ago

Well, what need of yours is not being met? Let's start with the problem you're having, and build something that can fix it. I'll even help you with the coding. :)

jackowayed 16y ago

The need that I think we're identifying is that often you need to find good info about, say, the ins and outs of raising an angel round. There's lots of great info on HN but it's scattered about among many threads. So you can't just go to wiki.ycombinator.com/angel-round and find out everything you need to know. You have to search, sift through the results ignoring false-positives (say, comments that reference raising an angel round but don't tell you how to raise one), etc. So I guess the simplest way to state the need is that we need an easy way to access the wealth of high-quality information that's on HN. One solution is a wiki that structures a (hopefully high-quality) subset of that information. The best solution, were it feasible, would probably be a super-"smart" search engine where you could query "How do I raise an angel round?" and it would understand the query and scan HN's comments and submitted articles (since I'm sure people have submitted articles that give tips for raising an angel round) and return a lot of information that it has determined applies, is high-quality, and covers all of the issues thoroughly. But if you can write that, you should be applying it to the entire web and making billions, not just using it to search HN ;) So that's an example of a solution that would be better. Which means it's clearly worth spending some time considering whether there are feasible solutions that are better than a wiki.

mryall 16y ago
Perhaps just adding a search box to the HN header or footer would help? It would certainly be better than clicking through to Google, then clicking to enter some search terms, then browsing a list of results on a completely different site.
- jackowayed 16y ago
  The problem really is that googling with site:news.ycombinator.com or using Search YC isn't a very good approach. Using my raising an angel round example again, say you search "raise angel round" http://searchyc.com/raise%20angel%20round http://searchyc.com/raise%20angel%20round. The results suck. There's an Ask HN that could have been good except that it has no responses. There's an article that sounds potentially useful, except that the link no longer works. And then there's also a lot of things like "Tweetdeck raises an angel round." "Posterous raises an angel round." Totally useless in this case.
antics 16y ago
The main problem I see here is that, even if a wiki wasn't too nebulous a solution to this problem, it is almost certainly perceived as one. Do you want to keep up Yet Another Wiki(tm)? Because I sure don't. But besides that, it actually probably is too nebulous a solution. Wikis are great for well-defined, discrete quantities, e.g., Princess Diana. You can define it, tell what happened, etc. How do you do the same for an article like "Raising Angel Investors"? You don't, and hence people write articles about it instead. In response to a comment by the OP [see below, or http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1618744 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1618744], I proposed that we simply start by addressing the problem in the most basic terms we can, i.e., an HN faq or thereabouts, much like Reddit's Programming faq [http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/programming http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/programming], but I'm very open to suggestions, and -- as an enthusiastic denizen of this community -- I'm also completely willing to help with the legwork required to make a plan that doesn't suck come to fruition.

jdc 16y ago

We have good information, but not good structure. Structure encourages high-quality contribution and eases querying of the information.

antics 16y ago
I admire your initiative, but "structure" -- at least as you describe it here -- is not a problem. It's a solution to the problem of organizing content. Don't you think? The question is, are Wikis the best answer to this problem? They're really very good at helping us categorize things that are very differentiable, and very definable. For example: The Hundred Years War make a good article in a wiki. "How to raise angel investors" does not. Instead, people write articles about it, and you take what you want out of them. Why don't we start with an HN faq, much like the Reddit programming faq [http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/programming http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/programming], and if that's successful, we can build from there. My philosophy is: address specifically the problem that you (or someone) has (i.e., "I have questions, and don't know where to begin!"), because spreading out too much or being too ambitious can literally kill a project. Don't take my word for it: the svn guys talk about how those sorts of projects were the "worst" parts of SourceForge: [http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/MythGeniusProgrammer.html http://code.google.com/events/io/2009/sessions/MythGeniusPro... <-- somewhere in there] So let's start with a specific need and address that. Once again, I'd be happy to help you if you elect to go forward, but we need to attack one thing at a time.
- jdc 16y ago
  I actually have no attachment to structuring this information as a wiki, but I know of no better readily available, collaborative information sharing software. Problems of structure (front or backend) and organizing the content are the inseparable in my mind.