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Show HN: Pairagraph – our attempt to build a new high-quality discussion forum

jonathanrstern 6y ago
Hey HN! I’m Jonathan, co-founder of Pairagraph. Pairagraph is a platform for written dialogue between pairs of notable individuals—politicians, CEOs, philosophers, novelists, technologists, religious leaders, and more. We love Twitter, but it can be annoying. It’s loud and noisy, it’s replete with echo chambers, and 280 characters is not enough to make a real argument. Pairagraph is our attempt to push back on these trends and build a proper town square for the digital age. We’re still fairly new but already have hosted 60+ dialogues, with contributors like Niall Ferguson, Joe Lonsdale, Balaji Srinivasan, Francis Fukuyama, Martin Gurri, and Om Malik. In the short run we’ve decided to keep our community closed—only certain people are able to participate in dialogues. The idea here is not to exclude anyone but to establish a track record of quality discussion before opening it up. We think that if we start with quality and move gradually to quantity, we’ll have a better shot in the long run of preserving both. The good news is that we are discussing opening it up, so there is some chance we will do so soon. We're also contemplating allowing dialogues with >2 participants. To recap: For now, Pairagraph is gated, but we’re wary of elitism and committed to including as many people (and perspectives) as possible. This is also why we have a ‘Suggest’ page on the website for readers who are interested in recommending future authors/topics. If you’ve read this far, here are a few of our favorite exchanges: https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/354c72095d2f42dab92bf42726d785ff https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/354c72095d2f42dab92bf427... https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/77d7e5451ea3467eaed19686cf7fce19 https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/77d7e5451ea3467eaed19686... https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/5e569e6fbc944e998c79502820c3b0c9 https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/5e569e6fbc944e998c795028... Along with adding more content, we’re focused on three things: (1) Improving retention and expanding reach (2) Polishing the site’s design/UI. Neither Carter (my co-founder) nor I are expert designers, we’ve done almost all of it ourselves, recognize that it needs help, and are working every day to add polish and professionalism (3) Eventually turning enough of a profit to make Pairagraph sustainable That’s our grand vision, but ultimately we’re just two friends from college working on a project that we think matters. What do you think?
- aj_nikhil 6y ago
  I saw this on reddit and instantly loved it. Well done and good luck.
- rrosen326 6y ago
  I love the idea. Keep it up. Here is a nitpick - I tried to find a way to send it to you privately, since it is trivial, but I couldn't find a link or your email anywhere. 1) Remove your photos - this feels like a serious site and your photos are so young that to me, and perhaps others, it detracts from the seriousness. And adds nothing. 2) Have a feedback link! But more importantly - great idea.
  - jonathanrstern 6y ago
    A handful of people have used our Suggest page for feedback, but that's not ideal. We'll set something up soon. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. Also, my email is jonathan@pairagraph.com. You're right... we should probably add contact info to the site.
- bavent 6y ago
  I actually found this a while back and loved it. I get to see perspectives I wouldn’t normally seek out, and to see their arguments for a position I wouldn’t ever see in my filter bubble, so thanks!
  - treis 6y ago
    It's a cool format, but I find most of the actual debate lackluster. There's only one that I've read where they specifically addressed each others arguments. Half the time one or both sides just puts up their talking points without real engagement. The other half the pretty much agree and make essentially the same argument in different ways.
    - sterlind 6y ago
      this is a tough problem to solve. it'd be nice to see each talking point separated like a line item, or have arguments visually hang from other supporting arguments, each of which could be challenged, rebutted, or marked "agree to disagree." but without heavy moderation, it'd result in something like a Presidential debate - candidates only paying lip service to the prompt while going off-topic to bash their opponents.
getcrunk 6y ago
This is a pretty cool idea! What about adding some voting when you do open it up to more users. (Like this person made more sense than the other)
- nathcd 6y ago
  Agreed that this is a cool idea, but I really hope they don't add voting. Leave the upvote/downvote noise on social media.
  - jonathanrstern 6y ago
    Thanks! 'Voting' is definitely something we've considered, but yeah, I don't think it's the right direction for us at this time.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    I think voting is a helpful first pass filter to cut down on the noise, but it needs to be capped or it becomes a game. I think Slashdot made the right call by capping the votes to +5/-2 and being somewhat stingy with their voting points. They also don't allow you to post and vote on the same article. Any discussion system that wants to grow large and doesn't have a plan to deal with trolls is doomed to fail. It would be like building an airplane but not taking wind resistance into account.
- jonathanrstern 6y ago
  Building something like this would definitely boost user engagement, which is something we've talked about wanting to do. I just worry that it could turn Pairagraph into something adversarial. At its best, we believe Pairagraph is a place for exploratory conversation rather than debate. It might be interesting to allow readers to vote on who they'd like to hear from in the future... Maybe that's a way to maintain a high level of dialogue quality while still allowing users to have a say about who and what is discussed on the site. What do you think about that?
  - fwip 6y ago
ilaksh 6y ago
It's a really interesting idea and well executed debate format. Along a similar vein for people interested in getting different viewpoints, please also take a look at http://improvethenews.org http://improvethenews.org and the work of Jonathan Haidt.
- jonathanrstern 6y ago
  Hadn't heard of Improve the News... Will definitely take a look! There are so many fledgling companies out there trying to improve the news, the quality of social media, etc. I really hope at least one of them succeeds!
fishtoaster 6y ago
As a long-time fan of high-level discourse and debate, I love this! Reminds me of https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/ https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/. Minor UI suggestion: When I opened it up to check it out, I clicked on a random dialogue (https://pairagraph.com/dialogue/b88167fd706941e8ac468283b51a66c1/1 https://pairagraph.com/dialogue/b88167fd706941e8ac468283b51a...) to see what the deal was. I was very confused because it looked like just a short article - clicking around didn't reveal any kind of discussion anywhere. It wasn't for a few more minutes that I realized this was a multi-part debate where only one side had spoken. Something like "This dialogue will continue when Jason Calacanis responds" at the bottom of the article would have helped a lot. Heck, some kind of "notify me when he does" option would be super cool. :)
- jonathanrstern 6y ago
  We love Intelligence Squared. It's one of our favorite 'competitors', along with Munk Debates! You're exactly right: It's not obvious at all that Jason's response is coming soon. And it needs to be. Thanks for the great suggestion.
drenvuk 6y ago
All I see are easy mainstream topics of discussion right now but I can see this being interesting. bookmarked.
- jonathanrstern 6y ago
  If there's anything specific you'd like to see on the site, we'd love to know: https://www.pairagraph.com/suggest https://www.pairagraph.com/suggest
fareesh 6y ago
Looks great - seems similar to letter.wiki I am skeptical as to the degree to which new platforms can help with the fundamental problems with the "sense-making apparatus" in our societies. Very few folks seem to be aware of the extent to which the news media, and by extension, their own assumptions about the world are broken or skewed. It is common for even intelligent folks to dish out quips like the "bullshit asymmetry principle", without accounting for the possibility that their own framing of the world around them may be akin to Plato's allegory of the cave. So even if we create new platforms, if some hypothetical person like Mr. Cucumber on the new platform makes a compelling, well-reasoned, well-researched case in favor of, for example, restricting immigration, the formula for discrediting this person is to cherry pick the profiles of some people who are sharing their content. If you find any references to some fringe topic like Q in a cherry picked sample of 100 people who shared the content, you can associate this person with those people and discredit the entire thing without having to attack their arguments. Those followers need not even exist, they can be made up. Before you know it the next trending topic will be "Who is Mr. Cucumber, the new darling of the alt-right?". That's the end of anyone ever listening to them again. This is just one example - there are many such strategies employed online contemporarily and they are very effective. Inoculating against this kind of bad faith tactic is necessary to see any kind of progress in many spheres. Our societies all around the world stagnated for decades, even centuries, under these tactics employed by the prevailing orthodoxies. The current state of the Internet has allowed a technologically leveraged version of these tactics to prevail today.
- golemiprague 6y ago
  4chan doesn't require an "identity" but that's also creating other problems. Maybe it is just being human, it can't be perfect.
- fwip 6y ago
  For anyone else who misparsed "bullshit asymmetry principle," this refers to the asymmetrical effort required to debunk vs. spread bullshit, and not an "asymmetry principle" which is bullshit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
foolinaround 6y ago
Is there a model where the contributors get paid - based on views, etc? I am thinking there could be scheduled, similar to the reddit AMA, where 2 top persons in a field with opposite opinions can be coaxed to debate about the topic? Both of them get a few hours to get back, and the back and forth rules can be set, and we would all be better off hearing the pros and cons from both sides.
- jonathanrstern 6y ago
  I think there's definitely a fun angle to explore here. Right now, everything is asynchronous. (Authors post at their own convenience.) But I wonder what would happen if we tried to host an event once a week. Something, say, for an hour or two one evening. It could be the top two people in a field, but it'd probably be interesting to bring in a few different types of folks as well. Right now, the format on Pairagraph is 4 entries, each 500 words, created by alternating authors. But we've recently thought about what it would look like to facilitate dialogues with more than 2 participants. Do you have any ideas for how contributors might get paid? Could crypto facilitate something like that?
mynameishere 6y ago
Topic: "Was Twitter Right To Have Booted Trump?" On the one hand, I am glad that the company de-platformed President Trump, because there was an active threat to the US government that he was abetting in real time. Okay, that's false. One of the many reasons why that is false is because Trump was in fact telling people to go home from the protest. Let's take a look at the counter-point. ...by all accounts a dangerous leader who goaded his white supremacist followers into violent actions Umm, that's even more false. For even more obvious reasons. So, what is the point of your new left-wing echo chamber again? There are plenty already--you do realize that, yes?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Maybe you could suggest[0] that as a topic: "Were President Trump's words and actions part of the reason why the Capitol was stormed?" Presumably you think the answer to that is "No", in which case you should put yourself forward as one of the experts. If I'm misrepresenting your position or asking the wrong question then hopefully you can find a more neutral way to phrase it. [0] https://www.pairagraph.com/suggest https://www.pairagraph.com/suggest
  - jonathanrstern 6y ago
    Agreed. We'd be happy to host a conversation on that topic!
mariodiana 6y ago
> While it may certainly be satisfying to see President Trump—by all accounts a dangerous leader who goaded his white supremacist followers into violent actions—banned […] This is the counterpoint? They share the same assumptions.
simplecto 6y ago
This reminds me of the debate format they had in one of the British publications. Was it FT or Economist? Either way, great idea. best of luck!
- jonathanrstern 6y ago
  Thanks! I think The Economist used to have a point/counterpoint series. Perhaps FT too.
spoonjim 6y ago
Cool idea but “authority” has lost so much of its credibility in recent years that I wonder whether these folks will produce anything better than the most upvoted Reddit comment for example.
prawn 6y ago
I've considered building something similar, but with more of a back and forth, so the contributors are writing a paragraph at a time - easier for them to create, and probably more engaging for readers. I always imagined it would be a private panel for 2-5 people, and then optionally comments from the masses at the bottom. I only viewed on mobile, but it looked good. Best of luck!
- jonathanrstern 6y ago
  That sounds very similar to what we're considering building for v2!
killingtime74 6y ago
We have a similar thing in Australia which is quite successful https://theconversation.com/au https://theconversation.com/au

Hey HN! I’m Jonathan, co-founder of Pairagraph. Pairagraph is a platform for written dialogue between pairs of notable individuals—politicians, CEOs, philosophers, novelists, technologists, religious leaders, and more. We love Twitter, but it can be annoying. It’s loud and noisy, it’s replete with echo chambers, and 280 characters is not enough to make a real argument. Pairagraph is our attempt to push back on these trends and build a proper town square for the digital age. We’re still fairly new but already have hosted 60+ dialogues, with contributors like Niall Ferguson, Joe Lonsdale, Balaji Srinivasan, Francis Fukuyama, Martin Gurri, and Om Malik. In the short run we’ve decided to keep our community closed—only certain people are able to participate in dialogues. The idea here is not to exclude anyone but to establish a track record of quality discussion before opening it up. We think that if we start with quality and move gradually to quantity, we’ll have a better shot in the long run of preserving both. The good news is that we are discussing opening it up, so there is some chance we will do so soon. We're also contemplating allowing dialogues with >2 participants. To recap: For now, Pairagraph is gated, but we’re wary of elitism and committed to including as many people (and perspectives) as possible. This is also why we have a ‘Suggest’ page on the website for readers who are interested in recommending future authors/topics. If you’ve read this far, here are a few of our favorite exchanges: https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/354c72095d2f42dab92bf42726d785ff https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/354c72095d2f42dab92bf427... https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/77d7e5451ea3467eaed19686cf7fce19 https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/77d7e5451ea3467eaed19686... https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/5e569e6fbc944e998c79502820c3b0c9 https://www.pairagraph.com/dialogue/5e569e6fbc944e998c795028... Along with adding more content, we’re focused on three things: (1) Improving retention and expanding reach (2) Polishing the site’s design/UI. Neither Carter (my co-founder) nor I are expert designers, we’ve done almost all of it ourselves, recognize that it needs help, and are working every day to add polish and professionalism (3) Eventually turning enough of a profit to make Pairagraph sustainable That’s our grand vision, but ultimately we’re just two friends from college working on a project that we think matters. What do you think?

aj_nikhil 6y ago
I saw this on reddit and instantly loved it. Well done and good luck.
rrosen326 6y ago
I love the idea. Keep it up. Here is a nitpick - I tried to find a way to send it to you privately, since it is trivial, but I couldn't find a link or your email anywhere. 1) Remove your photos - this feels like a serious site and your photos are so young that to me, and perhaps others, it detracts from the seriousness. And adds nothing. 2) Have a feedback link! But more importantly - great idea.
- jonathanrstern 6y ago
  A handful of people have used our Suggest page for feedback, but that's not ideal. We'll set something up soon. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. Also, my email is jonathan@pairagraph.com. You're right... we should probably add contact info to the site.
bavent 6y ago
I actually found this a while back and loved it. I get to see perspectives I wouldn’t normally seek out, and to see their arguments for a position I wouldn’t ever see in my filter bubble, so thanks!
- treis 6y ago
  It's a cool format, but I find most of the actual debate lackluster. There's only one that I've read where they specifically addressed each others arguments. Half the time one or both sides just puts up their talking points without real engagement. The other half the pretty much agree and make essentially the same argument in different ways.
  - sterlind 6y ago
    this is a tough problem to solve. it'd be nice to see each talking point separated like a line item, or have arguments visually hang from other supporting arguments, each of which could be challenged, rebutted, or marked "agree to disagree." but without heavy moderation, it'd result in something like a Presidential debate - candidates only paying lip service to the prompt while going off-topic to bash their opponents.

getcrunk 6y ago

This is a pretty cool idea! What about adding some voting when you do open it up to more users. (Like this person made more sense than the other)

nathcd 6y ago
Agreed that this is a cool idea, but I really hope they don't add voting. Leave the upvote/downvote noise on social media.
- jonathanrstern 6y ago
  Thanks! 'Voting' is definitely something we've considered, but yeah, I don't think it's the right direction for us at this time.
- jandrese 6y ago
  I think voting is a helpful first pass filter to cut down on the noise, but it needs to be capped or it becomes a game. I think Slashdot made the right call by capping the votes to +5/-2 and being somewhat stingy with their voting points. They also don't allow you to post and vote on the same article. Any discussion system that wants to grow large and doesn't have a plan to deal with trolls is doomed to fail. It would be like building an airplane but not taking wind resistance into account.
jonathanrstern 6y ago
Building something like this would definitely boost user engagement, which is something we've talked about wanting to do. I just worry that it could turn Pairagraph into something adversarial. At its best, we believe Pairagraph is a place for exploratory conversation rather than debate. It might be interesting to allow readers to vote on who they'd like to hear from in the future... Maybe that's a way to maintain a high level of dialogue quality while still allowing users to have a say about who and what is discussed on the site. What do you think about that?
- fwip 6y ago

ilaksh 6y ago

It's a really interesting idea and well executed debate format. Along a similar vein for people interested in getting different viewpoints, please also take a look at http://improvethenews.org http://improvethenews.org and the work of Jonathan Haidt.

jonathanrstern 6y ago
Hadn't heard of Improve the News... Will definitely take a look! There are so many fledgling companies out there trying to improve the news, the quality of social media, etc. I really hope at least one of them succeeds!

fishtoaster 6y ago

As a long-time fan of high-level discourse and debate, I love this! Reminds me of https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/ https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/. Minor UI suggestion: When I opened it up to check it out, I clicked on a random dialogue (https://pairagraph.com/dialogue/b88167fd706941e8ac468283b51a66c1/1 https://pairagraph.com/dialogue/b88167fd706941e8ac468283b51a...) to see what the deal was. I was very confused because it looked like just a short article - clicking around didn't reveal any kind of discussion anywhere. It wasn't for a few more minutes that I realized this was a multi-part debate where only one side had spoken. Something like "This dialogue will continue when Jason Calacanis responds" at the bottom of the article would have helped a lot. Heck, some kind of "notify me when he does" option would be super cool. :)

jonathanrstern 6y ago
We love Intelligence Squared. It's one of our favorite 'competitors', along with Munk Debates! You're exactly right: It's not obvious at all that Jason's response is coming soon. And it needs to be. Thanks for the great suggestion.

drenvuk 6y ago

All I see are easy mainstream topics of discussion right now but I can see this being interesting. bookmarked.

jonathanrstern 6y ago
If there's anything specific you'd like to see on the site, we'd love to know: https://www.pairagraph.com/suggest https://www.pairagraph.com/suggest

fareesh 6y ago

Looks great - seems similar to letter.wiki I am skeptical as to the degree to which new platforms can help with the fundamental problems with the "sense-making apparatus" in our societies. Very few folks seem to be aware of the extent to which the news media, and by extension, their own assumptions about the world are broken or skewed. It is common for even intelligent folks to dish out quips like the "bullshit asymmetry principle", without accounting for the possibility that their own framing of the world around them may be akin to Plato's allegory of the cave. So even if we create new platforms, if some hypothetical person like Mr. Cucumber on the new platform makes a compelling, well-reasoned, well-researched case in favor of, for example, restricting immigration, the formula for discrediting this person is to cherry pick the profiles of some people who are sharing their content. If you find any references to some fringe topic like Q in a cherry picked sample of 100 people who shared the content, you can associate this person with those people and discredit the entire thing without having to attack their arguments. Those followers need not even exist, they can be made up. Before you know it the next trending topic will be "Who is Mr. Cucumber, the new darling of the alt-right?". That's the end of anyone ever listening to them again. This is just one example - there are many such strategies employed online contemporarily and they are very effective. Inoculating against this kind of bad faith tactic is necessary to see any kind of progress in many spheres. Our societies all around the world stagnated for decades, even centuries, under these tactics employed by the prevailing orthodoxies. The current state of the Internet has allowed a technologically leveraged version of these tactics to prevail today.

golemiprague 6y ago
4chan doesn't require an "identity" but that's also creating other problems. Maybe it is just being human, it can't be perfect.
fwip 6y ago
For anyone else who misparsed "bullshit asymmetry principle," this refers to the asymmetrical effort required to debunk vs. spread bullshit, and not an "asymmetry principle" which is bullshit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

foolinaround 6y ago

Is there a model where the contributors get paid - based on views, etc? I am thinking there could be scheduled, similar to the reddit AMA, where 2 top persons in a field with opposite opinions can be coaxed to debate about the topic? Both of them get a few hours to get back, and the back and forth rules can be set, and we would all be better off hearing the pros and cons from both sides.

jonathanrstern 6y ago
I think there's definitely a fun angle to explore here. Right now, everything is asynchronous. (Authors post at their own convenience.) But I wonder what would happen if we tried to host an event once a week. Something, say, for an hour or two one evening. It could be the top two people in a field, but it'd probably be interesting to bring in a few different types of folks as well. Right now, the format on Pairagraph is 4 entries, each 500 words, created by alternating authors. But we've recently thought about what it would look like to facilitate dialogues with more than 2 participants. Do you have any ideas for how contributors might get paid? Could crypto facilitate something like that?

mynameishere 6y ago

Topic: "Was Twitter Right To Have Booted Trump?" On the one hand, I am glad that the company de-platformed President Trump, because there was an active threat to the US government that he was abetting in real time. Okay, that's false. One of the many reasons why that is false is because Trump was in fact telling people to go home from the protest. Let's take a look at the counter-point. ...by all accounts a dangerous leader who goaded his white supremacist followers into violent actions Umm, that's even more false. For even more obvious reasons. So, what is the point of your new left-wing echo chamber again? There are plenty already--you do realize that, yes?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dane-pgp 6y ago
Maybe you could suggest[0] that as a topic: "Were President Trump's words and actions part of the reason why the Capitol was stormed?" Presumably you think the answer to that is "No", in which case you should put yourself forward as one of the experts. If I'm misrepresenting your position or asking the wrong question then hopefully you can find a more neutral way to phrase it. [0] https://www.pairagraph.com/suggest https://www.pairagraph.com/suggest
- jonathanrstern 6y ago
  Agreed. We'd be happy to host a conversation on that topic!

mariodiana 6y ago

> While it may certainly be satisfying to see President Trump—by all accounts a dangerous leader who goaded his white supremacist followers into violent actions—banned […] This is the counterpoint? They share the same assumptions.

simplecto 6y ago

This reminds me of the debate format they had in one of the British publications. Was it FT or Economist? Either way, great idea. best of luck!

jonathanrstern 6y ago
Thanks! I think The Economist used to have a point/counterpoint series. Perhaps FT too.

spoonjim 6y ago

Cool idea but “authority” has lost so much of its credibility in recent years that I wonder whether these folks will produce anything better than the most upvoted Reddit comment for example.

prawn 6y ago

I've considered building something similar, but with more of a back and forth, so the contributors are writing a paragraph at a time - easier for them to create, and probably more engaging for readers. I always imagined it would be a private panel for 2-5 people, and then optionally comments from the masses at the bottom. I only viewed on mobile, but it looked good. Best of luck!

jonathanrstern 6y ago
That sounds very similar to what we're considering building for v2!

killingtime74 6y ago

We have a similar thing in Australia which is quite successful https://theconversation.com/au https://theconversation.com/au