6 ms·

Please Discourage The Region Wise Fragmentation of Hackernews

37 points by dkd903 16y ago

We saw an Indian version of Hackernews earlier today. And then there was a post about DC getting it's own Hackernews. If this fragmentation goes on we will end up killing this awesome Hackernews community and it's awesome visitors.

variety 16y ago
But as the community is growing, this is kind of inevitable. And desirable. What HN needs is enhanced search (and tagging) capabilities, precisely to allow user to select content from specfic regions (and in different languages). For example, I think it'd be extremely useful to be able to bring up posts specifically about China, or Paris, or only in French or Russian.
- rednum 16y ago
  I think it is desirable too. European version of Hacker News would be extremely useful for me - sure, there's lots of region-agnostic valuable content, but also many topics considering startups are irrelevant to people in my area (Central Europe) - for example 'whos hiring?' threads consist mostly of offers in US (and of course offers from Europe would be much more useful for european hackers)
  - pdelgallego 16y ago
    I also think that it would be very interesting an European Version of HN. But, I'm not that sure that it will reach the critical mass of users that make a community vibrant.
    - mhd 16y ago
      Yes, you probably have a fragmentation of topics, i.e. the startup stuff will be posted on the European site, but the "hacker" articles of general interest will be posted and discussed here. Which seriously restricts the user base and thus the helpful answers on the Euro site. I could imagine something that works, if you're willing to fragment even further and make language-specific sites, as this way you could post articles in languages other than English and you'd get discussions from those users who don't feel that comfortable in English. But that further restricts your user base. Might work for French and German, but beyond that? (Spanish, too, of course, but then you'll run into problems with the country/law specific stuff)
ScottWhigham 16y ago
I don't mind the region wise fragmentation personally. I cannot be global - I can't keep track of every single world hacker-related event and, if it is forced on me, I will reject it (whether consciously or subconsciously). I have the largest interest in my community and I mean "community" in both the sense of the hacker community, but also my regional community: Texas, United States, North America, Western Hemisphere, Europe, Australia, and then "The Rest of the World" in that order. If "The Rest of the World" begins to dominate the stories or even if Australia, for example, starts dominating the stories then I will head to somewhere where more of my interests are shown. And I think that's just basic human nature. We can only read so many headlines, articles, posts in a day and it makes sense that we self-filter to select the sites that show us things that are the most interesting to us.
- MrMan 16y ago
  I have no regional community. I live in a certain place, but my servers are not here, my collaborators are not here, my customers are not here. What is "here?"
  - ScottWhigham 16y ago
    I don't buy that. You do have a regional community. You may choose not to participate in it or may not wish to but you do have a regional community. I would venture to guess that you are fairly young to make that comment as well and also have no children. Once you have a spouse, children, parents who need support of one kind or another, your idea of "community" becomes centered much more in the real world than in this virtual world.
    - MrMan 16y ago
      I meant community in business, work. I am middle-aged, with children. I do not make money from the community in which I live, I make it globally. It is an accident, not a matter of choice initially. I choose to keep it that way because I find it liberating. My work environment is spread between clients, algorithms, infrastructure, all global. My network of family is thankfully centered around my physical home, and my network of friends is global. Sry to go on at length, but I found your comment provocative and I wanted to paint a clear picture.
Lukeas14 16y ago
As the community's size grows the content will inevitably get more diverse. The solution is not separate sites where the content is forever fragmented but rather a hash tag solution (ugly but its something we can implement ourselves).
space-monkey 16y ago
If you don't like it don't use it. If people are using it, it's addressing a need.
- powrtoch 16y ago
  It could still qualify as a hack. It's a non-sustainable but low-cost way of addressing a need. The more hacks go into a system, as opposed to forward-looking real solutions, the less stable that system becomes. I think what the OP is saying is "bear with us for a little while and we'll try and find a real solution to this".
duck 16y ago
Take a look at Hacker News "India" (http://hackernews.in http://hackernews.in) and you will see this isn't a problem or anything to be concerned with. Hacker News is what it is because of the traffic it gets. You can argue with more traffic you get worse results on the homepage, but with not enough traffic you will never get that community feeling you do here. You will notice that this new site doesn't have a single new story in the last 6+ hours and the comments for any given article is weak at best. I'm sure with time it will improve, but it won't take anything away from what we have here.
- drawkbox 16y ago
  Also it looks like they just want local content and not just a carbon copy: http://hackernews.in/item?id=232 http://hackernews.in/item?id=232
invertedlambda 16y ago
Why not create a "Bay Area" HN? :P
- jrnkntl 16y ago
  I thought that's the one we are on right now.
user24 16y ago
Well hang on now - be clear that Hackernews and ycombinator are two different things. If this[1] is the DC post you're talking about, then that's a DC version of ycombinator, and I fully support that kind of 'fragmentation'. A UK YC would be much welcomed (I'm sure there are startup incubators on the UK already, but more is better). [1] http://codybrowntext.tumblr.com/post/1602181256/dc-is-getting-its-own-version-of-y-combinator http://codybrowntext.tumblr.com/post/1602181256/dc-is-gettin... I can see the relevance of regionalised hacker news sites, but I dislike the idea of a regionalised Hacker News site. Note the capitalisation and plurality.
judofyr 16y ago
The point of Hacker News India is to discuss India-related news which doesn't get much attention over here. HNI doesn't compete with HN, it completes it.
- angrycoder 16y ago
  1) What is so different about startups and programming in India? 2) What makes you think the rest of us (non-Indian) folks wouldn't be interested in these topics? note: I am not being a smart-ass here. I am genuinely curious. Personally, I think it would interesting to hear about how this stuff actually works over there. You know, a real perspective other than "they're stealing our jobs" or Outsourced.
  - allenbrunson 16y ago
    news.yc is now really, really crowded. an avalanche of submissions means that only a few get to make it to the front page. as simply a numbers game, not very many of them are going to be indian-specific. personally, i can very clearly see why they'd want to do something like this.
    - MrMan 16y ago
      But if the Indian audience upvotes them they will rise to the top.
jerf 16y ago
What's with the weird assumption that you can only visit one website? I don't think that's how this Internet thing works. If there was a local version for me, I'd use it, but I wouldn't necessarily stop using this one.
- ericd 16y ago
  People generally only frequent a small number of sites, this takes up one of those spots. Add 10 more and you've more than exhausted that number for most people.
  - jerf 16y ago
    When engaging in cultural protectionism, I think you should consider the opposite side of what you are telling people to do. In this case, sites cooler than HN-classic should not be made, and if they are made, people shouldn't visit them, because that might hurt HN-classic. Is that really a sensible position to be taking? If HN can only survive by people purposely not visiting better sites, HN doesn't deserve to survive. This entire line of logic is silly when you actually translate it into concrete recommendations you are making to real people.
    - ericd 16y ago
      I'm not saying anything about coolness or quality of sites, or that some sites should exist and others shouldn't, I'm not sure where you're getting that in my comment. I'm just saying that fragmentation of a community can be a very real problem, as with more subcommunities, people stop visiting the main one, and the main becomes less diverse. Your original comment trivializes that, because "you can visit more than one site". If the designers of Hacker News want a community that's segmented, let them do it. I don't think it's right to use the HN name to do it for them, though.
      - jerf 16y ago
        "I'm not sure where you're getting that in my comment" I explained it to you. If you want non-fragmentation, that is exactly equivalent to telling people that they should stay where they are. "Not fragmenting the community" can't happen in the abstract, it can only happen in the concrete choices of others. Therefore, when you advocate against the fragmentation of a community even as it naturally tends to it by the natural result of people doing what they desire, you are advocating that other people should not follow their desires to go somewhere else. They're not even two sides of the same coin, they're just the same thing. But it sure sounds a lot less friendly, which in my opinion is the more accurate way of looking at it.
grovulent 16y ago
I think some kind of regional functionality is important - whether that takes place within on external to hacker news. We need some means of generating stronger local communities.
codedivine 16y ago
What about a tag system? You can tag posts about a location with the location's tag and for each location you can see all posts tagged with that location.
- ScottWhigham 16y ago
  What's the proper protocol for disagreement again? I don't want a tag system so should I comment? or downvote? Not trying to be a jerk - it's a serious question. "I see you" and appreciate your making the comment but I personally wouldn't want tags.
malandrew 16y ago
Hacker News could use Quora-like tagging and following to improve its utility. #28 on PG's essay "Ideas We'd Like to Fund" is "Fixing Email Overload" http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html . For many of us, HN overload is as serious as HN overload. There is a front-page story daily for every new hack invented to manage it. HNI fragments HN as does techstartu.ps
MrMan 16y ago
I agree that fragmentation will ruin the HN experience. I want MORE Indian news here, not less! DC, I don't know.
adrianwaj 16y ago
Speaking of which, would someone here be willing to setup an arc forum on my Linode dedicated to health. Perhaps they can work with me to fill it with posts and comments.

37 points by dkd903 16y ago

variety 16y ago

But as the community is growing, this is kind of inevitable. And desirable. What HN needs is enhanced search (and tagging) capabilities, precisely to allow user to select content from specfic regions (and in different languages). For example, I think it'd be extremely useful to be able to bring up posts specifically about China, or Paris, or only in French or Russian.

rednum 16y ago
I think it is desirable too. European version of Hacker News would be extremely useful for me - sure, there's lots of region-agnostic valuable content, but also many topics considering startups are irrelevant to people in my area (Central Europe) - for example 'whos hiring?' threads consist mostly of offers in US (and of course offers from Europe would be much more useful for european hackers)
- pdelgallego 16y ago
  I also think that it would be very interesting an European Version of HN. But, I'm not that sure that it will reach the critical mass of users that make a community vibrant.
  - mhd 16y ago
    Yes, you probably have a fragmentation of topics, i.e. the startup stuff will be posted on the European site, but the "hacker" articles of general interest will be posted and discussed here. Which seriously restricts the user base and thus the helpful answers on the Euro site. I could imagine something that works, if you're willing to fragment even further and make language-specific sites, as this way you could post articles in languages other than English and you'd get discussions from those users who don't feel that comfortable in English. But that further restricts your user base. Might work for French and German, but beyond that? (Spanish, too, of course, but then you'll run into problems with the country/law specific stuff)

ScottWhigham 16y ago

I don't mind the region wise fragmentation personally. I cannot be global - I can't keep track of every single world hacker-related event and, if it is forced on me, I will reject it (whether consciously or subconsciously). I have the largest interest in my community and I mean "community" in both the sense of the hacker community, but also my regional community: Texas, United States, North America, Western Hemisphere, Europe, Australia, and then "The Rest of the World" in that order. If "The Rest of the World" begins to dominate the stories or even if Australia, for example, starts dominating the stories then I will head to somewhere where more of my interests are shown. And I think that's just basic human nature. We can only read so many headlines, articles, posts in a day and it makes sense that we self-filter to select the sites that show us things that are the most interesting to us.

MrMan 16y ago
I have no regional community. I live in a certain place, but my servers are not here, my collaborators are not here, my customers are not here. What is "here?"
- ScottWhigham 16y ago
  I don't buy that. You do have a regional community. You may choose not to participate in it or may not wish to but you do have a regional community. I would venture to guess that you are fairly young to make that comment as well and also have no children. Once you have a spouse, children, parents who need support of one kind or another, your idea of "community" becomes centered much more in the real world than in this virtual world.
  - MrMan 16y ago
    I meant community in business, work. I am middle-aged, with children. I do not make money from the community in which I live, I make it globally. It is an accident, not a matter of choice initially. I choose to keep it that way because I find it liberating. My work environment is spread between clients, algorithms, infrastructure, all global. My network of family is thankfully centered around my physical home, and my network of friends is global. Sry to go on at length, but I found your comment provocative and I wanted to paint a clear picture.

Lukeas14 16y ago

As the community's size grows the content will inevitably get more diverse. The solution is not separate sites where the content is forever fragmented but rather a hash tag solution (ugly but its something we can implement ourselves).

space-monkey 16y ago

If you don't like it don't use it. If people are using it, it's addressing a need.

powrtoch 16y ago
It could still qualify as a hack. It's a non-sustainable but low-cost way of addressing a need. The more hacks go into a system, as opposed to forward-looking real solutions, the less stable that system becomes. I think what the OP is saying is "bear with us for a little while and we'll try and find a real solution to this".

duck 16y ago

Take a look at Hacker News "India" (http://hackernews.in http://hackernews.in) and you will see this isn't a problem or anything to be concerned with. Hacker News is what it is because of the traffic it gets. You can argue with more traffic you get worse results on the homepage, but with not enough traffic you will never get that community feeling you do here. You will notice that this new site doesn't have a single new story in the last 6+ hours and the comments for any given article is weak at best. I'm sure with time it will improve, but it won't take anything away from what we have here.

drawkbox 16y ago
Also it looks like they just want local content and not just a carbon copy: http://hackernews.in/item?id=232 http://hackernews.in/item?id=232

invertedlambda 16y ago

Why not create a "Bay Area" HN? :P

jrnkntl 16y ago
I thought that's the one we are on right now.

user24 16y ago

Well hang on now - be clear that Hackernews and ycombinator are two different things. If this[1] is the DC post you're talking about, then that's a DC version of ycombinator, and I fully support that kind of 'fragmentation'. A UK YC would be much welcomed (I'm sure there are startup incubators on the UK already, but more is better). [1] http://codybrowntext.tumblr.com/post/1602181256/dc-is-getting-its-own-version-of-y-combinator http://codybrowntext.tumblr.com/post/1602181256/dc-is-gettin... I can see the relevance of regionalised hacker news sites, but I dislike the idea of a regionalised Hacker News site. Note the capitalisation and plurality.

judofyr 16y ago

The point of Hacker News India is to discuss India-related news which doesn't get much attention over here. HNI doesn't compete with HN, it completes it.

angrycoder 16y ago
1) What is so different about startups and programming in India? 2) What makes you think the rest of us (non-Indian) folks wouldn't be interested in these topics? note: I am not being a smart-ass here. I am genuinely curious. Personally, I think it would interesting to hear about how this stuff actually works over there. You know, a real perspective other than "they're stealing our jobs" or Outsourced.
- allenbrunson 16y ago
  news.yc is now really, really crowded. an avalanche of submissions means that only a few get to make it to the front page. as simply a numbers game, not very many of them are going to be indian-specific. personally, i can very clearly see why they'd want to do something like this.
  - MrMan 16y ago
    But if the Indian audience upvotes them they will rise to the top.

jerf 16y ago

What's with the weird assumption that you can only visit one website? I don't think that's how this Internet thing works. If there was a local version for me, I'd use it, but I wouldn't necessarily stop using this one.

ericd 16y ago
People generally only frequent a small number of sites, this takes up one of those spots. Add 10 more and you've more than exhausted that number for most people.
- jerf 16y ago
  When engaging in cultural protectionism, I think you should consider the opposite side of what you are telling people to do. In this case, sites cooler than HN-classic should not be made, and if they are made, people shouldn't visit them, because that might hurt HN-classic. Is that really a sensible position to be taking? If HN can only survive by people purposely not visiting better sites, HN doesn't deserve to survive. This entire line of logic is silly when you actually translate it into concrete recommendations you are making to real people.
  - ericd 16y ago
    I'm not saying anything about coolness or quality of sites, or that some sites should exist and others shouldn't, I'm not sure where you're getting that in my comment. I'm just saying that fragmentation of a community can be a very real problem, as with more subcommunities, people stop visiting the main one, and the main becomes less diverse. Your original comment trivializes that, because "you can visit more than one site". If the designers of Hacker News want a community that's segmented, let them do it. I don't think it's right to use the HN name to do it for them, though.
    - jerf 16y ago
      "I'm not sure where you're getting that in my comment" I explained it to you. If you want non-fragmentation, that is exactly equivalent to telling people that they should stay where they are. "Not fragmenting the community" can't happen in the abstract, it can only happen in the concrete choices of others. Therefore, when you advocate against the fragmentation of a community even as it naturally tends to it by the natural result of people doing what they desire, you are advocating that other people should not follow their desires to go somewhere else. They're not even two sides of the same coin, they're just the same thing. But it sure sounds a lot less friendly, which in my opinion is the more accurate way of looking at it.

grovulent 16y ago

I think some kind of regional functionality is important - whether that takes place within on external to hacker news. We need some means of generating stronger local communities.

codedivine 16y ago

What about a tag system? You can tag posts about a location with the location's tag and for each location you can see all posts tagged with that location.

ScottWhigham 16y ago
What's the proper protocol for disagreement again? I don't want a tag system so should I comment? or downvote? Not trying to be a jerk - it's a serious question. "I see you" and appreciate your making the comment but I personally wouldn't want tags.

malandrew 16y ago

Hacker News could use Quora-like tagging and following to improve its utility. #28 on PG's essay "Ideas We'd Like to Fund" is "Fixing Email Overload" http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html . For many of us, HN overload is as serious as HN overload. There is a front-page story daily for every new hack invented to manage it. HNI fragments HN as does techstartu.ps

MrMan 16y ago

I agree that fragmentation will ruin the HN experience. I want MORE Indian news here, not less! DC, I don't know.

adrianwaj 16y ago

Speaking of which, would someone here be willing to setup an arc forum on my Linode dedicated to health. Perhaps they can work with me to fill it with posts and comments.