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I did this exact same thing, called it Comments Network, around 8 years ago (img+discussion here, project doesn't exist anymore): https://imgur.com/a/98fpLs6 h
by franciscop 3y ago
I did this exact same thing, called it Comments Network, around 8 years ago (img+discussion here, project doesn't exist anymore):
https://imgur.com/a/98fpLs6 https://imgur.com/a/98fpLs6
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12898366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12898366
In the end I was contacted by HN and was told to shut it down, and so I did since I didn't want to get into a fight. Wonder if you'll receive a similar message or they'll allow it now. There were 3 very important points that I don't see in your project:
1. I moved from "story ID" to "story URL" in the end, since a single URL can have multiple HN threads and I'd be interested in them.
2. The time of comment is _very_ important, not sure why you are not showing it?
3. I had to add some mechanism to block individual comments, while rare there _is_ SPAM and ad-hominem in HN and if you are showing the comments in your project, you might want to do a bit of comment moderation. How much, then it's to the person sharing it, with Comments Network you could also show a single individual comment
- bshshshshsh 3y agoI guess you made it before hacker news released their API?
- rob74 3y agoI'm not that familiar with the topic, but it's one thing for HN to provide an API and quite another thing for them to be Ok with being used as a "comments section" or forum for someone else's site, blog etc.?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gwbas1c 3y agoI'd be very interested in someone pointing the TOS to see if this is explicitly blocked. IMO: If Hacker News doesn't want this kind of thing, it should be explicitly called out in the TOS. Otherwise, they don't have much of a leg to stand on. (Except by blocking these kinds of things server-side.)
- JCharante 3y agoI feel like HN is small enough/ small townish enough to not have everything in the TOS and I like it that way.
- dingnuts 3y agoAbsolutely it is not. No interactive site is too small for a clear terms of service, otherwise it's rule by arbitrary judgement
- jefftk 3y agoThat's pretty extreme: I don't think random bloggers that host comment sections need to be laying out terms of service. Instead, they can handle things as they come up, and the community is small enough, and stakes are low enough, that this is fine. HN is bigger than a blog, but it's still small enough that it can be fully moderated with 1-2 people, and I think similar tradeoffs apply here.
- catchnear4321 3y agoif we always demand to be told how to behave, no one will actually understand how to behave in isolation. you wouldn’t download a car.
- franciscop 3y agoNo TOS needed, there's already international copyright law that explicitly disallows this. With a system like this, you are _embedding copyrighted content into your website without consent_. If it was a single quote, a comment, or maybe even a screenshot it might be exempted, but you cannot just copy/paste someone's full content into your website without permission. PS, Hacker News might not even be in the position to officially allow this, similarly to how a generic OSS dev cannot just relicense a project without getting consent from all contributors (or a previous CLA).
- jacquesm 3y agoA Terms-Of-Service document enumerates your rights and the rights of the owners of the property under the terms of service, anything that isn't explicitly named you can assume to be disallowed unless you have a document to prove that you have an exemption.
- em-bee 3y agoi wonder why they wanted it shut down. there are a few alternate frontends to hackernews. technically this would be no different. likewise linking to hackernews discussions should also be ok. maybe an issue with load on the site if this becomes to popular?
- jacquesm 3y agoBecause it doesn't scale.
- averageRoyalty 3y agoBut I thought we were meant to do things that don't scale?
- ratg13 3y agoHacker news is meant to be a news discussion site focused at a particular crowd, not a bastardized website comment section. It actively ruins the experience here by allowing content that doesn’t originate from this website. A changed UI and making the site a “feature” of another site are not the same thing.