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Show HN: Hacker News for film buffs
I tried to replicate the minimal design of hacker news. A small pet project I wanted to do after getting frustrated with the politics and dumb down conversations the film communities have on X/twitter, instagram and other social platforms have. I'll try to update the landing page with more links, feel free to check it out and judge.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- clueless 2y agohmm have you tried /r/movies/ ?
- asolis0105 2y agoIt's lame. God created mankind in his own image; why can't I try to create a film community in my own image ?
- Pedro_Ribeiro 2y agoGo ahead my guy, you have my support :)
- criddell 2y agoI understand the Citizen Kane link, but… I don’t think “New York Daily Inquirer” is a great name for this project.
- asolis0105 2y agoYeah, it's a pretty long name, but the goal is to discourage average users. Having a long domain name already discourages lots of users. You immediately understanding the meaning behind 'New York Daily Inquirer' gives me hope that other users will be interested in giving it a try, as it's a word-of-mouth project. My take is that if you want to build a good community in any subject, you have to discourage average users; they are poison to the conversation. Lean and mean.
- coolandsmartrr 2y agoI suppose Hacker News likewise dissuaded average users with its brutalist design, which made users to focus on the content of their post/comment. Furthermore, ycombinator.com is not a domain that seems friendly to the average user. Like any social networks, the key to this website's success would be retention. I hope you find a way to make users come back often.
- probably_wrong 2y agoI used to be super into /r/movies, but then two things happened. First, the user who used to make weekly box office analysis decided to stop doing it for free. Good for him/her, but that was a big blow for the subreddit. Second, once you're long enough you realize how the hype machine is always there. From "leaked" picture to teaser to poster to trailer, all negative comments are met with "you can't judge until you've seen the movie" while positive ones are upvoted to the top. Not the only forum guilty of this, but it turns the subreddit into yet another arm of the movie PR industry. I guess it's the inevitable end of all forums, so maybe this one will capture the magic that /r/movies lost.
- qingcharles 2y agoA majority of forums turn to shit, but some thrive. HN is one of the best examples out there, especially as it's public with no wall. What's the magic?
- john2x 2y agodang
- throwadobe 2y agoFull time moderator(s) who are paid a proper living to do their job and happen to be literally _excellent_ at it
- freedomben 2y agoWhat are some of the other examples?
- nottorp 2y ago> First, the user who used to make weekly box office analysis What does box office performance have to do with quality? Already looks like the subreddit has the wrong focus.
- probably_wrong 2y agoIt's a proxy for both the movie quality and for where the cinema winds are blowin. It also adds context to better understand what's at stake for movies based on distributor, producer and genres. When a horror movie costs 2M and a Marvel film 200M, "20M box office" by your favorite director can mean two very different things for their future.
- mnk47 2y agor/TrueFilm is much better imo. Far from perfect, but it seems much closer to "HN for film nerds" than r/movies. Still, a new community that isn't beholden to Reddit's quirks and whims is always welcome.
- layer8 2y agoOn my smartphone only two entries of your page fit onto the screen at a time, with a lot of seemingly unnecessary whitespace, whereas it’s seven or eight entries on HN, despite 125% zoom. So HN’s minimalist space-saving design isn’t quite carried over.
- asolis0105 2y agoWill fix !
- nottorp 2y agoOn my 14" macbook pro I get 2 and 2/3 boxes too. Firefox, fonts slightly enlarged to like 120%.
- motohagiography 2y agoI like the idea and really liked the Reznor/Ross article on synths. it will be interesting to see if it catches on. are votes and views important now? what do people do w/ HN? comment, read comments, paste links into mixed private chats. I wonder if it would be worth paying some funny people to kick off the discussions by arguing with each other.
- wizardforhire 2y agoVery cool! My initial take… make it even more minimal. HN is almost spartan to a fault, just a hair above all text. This is objectively a good this. Get rid of the white space, reduce the font size, remove the boxes around the posts, lose the italics and make the header a quarter of its size and finally stick to one font. That’ll get you closer to the hn aesthetic… But all of that will be for not if you don’t moderate. All the graphic design (or lack there of) in the world will not replicate hands on thoughtful compassionate human moderation. Hn is what it is because @dang is who he is. It’s a fine line to walk and biases will reveal themselves in abhorrent ways. Building communities is as much a spiritual journey for the maintainers as it is a never ending drudgery of minutia…
- blitzpoet 2y agoI like the white space and the look. It has personality.
- calmbonsai 2y agoYou gotta' increase the info-density. Grab HN's stylesheet https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css?CEh26wiAG7FUlVHVtVAw https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css?CEh26wiAG7FUlVHVtVAw and maybe look into an even more info-dense landing page like Brutalist Report: https://brutalist.report/ https://brutalist.report/
- pyromaker 2y ago[dead]
- dang 2y agoI didn't remember that last one but it turns out to have had a big thread here: Show HN: The Brutalist Report – A rolling snapshot of the day’s headlines - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30430752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30430752 - Feb 2022 (88 comments)
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- germinalphrase 2y agoAgree. Too much scrolling required.
- Triphibian 2y agoEver since the death of Google Reader and the slow painful death of RSS I've been starved for good aggregation of non-stupid culture writing. This is a decent start.
- nikkwong 2y agoI want a HN for politics, but that's just me I guess—because I can't seem to find it anywhere.
- card_zero 2y agoThe idea is both attractive and baffling. Do you hope people might talk politics dispassionately? Perhaps if it had 1:1 ratio of mods to users ... and we could throw religion into the mix too, why not.
- nikkwong 2y agoEvery time a political topic crosses the front page of HN, it receives a plethora of attention and the debate is constructive and informative. These threads are some of my favorite, but I can understand why other HN users have no interest and perceive it as off topic. I’d just like a community that was as informed and thought provoking as HN but focused a bit more on world affairs and a bit less on tech. Reddit, because of its obsession with jokes and memes, will never get there; even in the most serious subreddits
- nottorp 2y agoMost political topics on HN are flagged dead though.
- jdougan 2y agoIn Chrome's Reader Mode, the headlines don't show.
- deisteve 2y agoUI needs work
- jarsin 2y agoWhy New York in the name?
- ks2048 2y agoI also didn't understand the name. Another comment mentioned that it is a reference to Citizen Kane.
- defrost 2y agoMedia tycoon and proto Rupert Murdoch wannabe Charles Foster Kane (totally not William Randolph Hearst) was the Owner/Publisher of the New York Daily Inquirer (in addition to being a behind the curtain lever puller and king maker). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Foster_Kane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Foster_Kane
- bag_boy 2y agoLove the idea
- since7 2y agogreat content so far, though I agree with others - it should be more dense I would love to have an RSS for this
- coolandsmartrr 2y agoAs someone who has garnered much HN karma commenting on film, I'm glad to see an attempt to make a quality film community. It's difficult to bootstrap an online community, let alone one with the quality of HN. You're going to need visitors who (1) visit frequently and (2) have much insights to offer on film. (2) may be more difficult, because you need people who already educate themselves about film from quality sources. [1] Furthermore, you'll need to moderate heavily to enforce an editorial standard and dissuade low-quality reactions. I share your frustration with existing online film communities. The problems I notice in online film communities (including the film-specific Letterboxd) are: - knee-jerk reactions that are paltry in analysis (e.g. "old films are better because they were shot on film" or "how dare you dislike that film") - churlish reactions getting "likes" in part to its humor, not its content - comments saying nothing more than "look how beautiful/ugly this is" A couple of questions: 1) This website may become more valuable if it could attract and retain insightful commenters. Is there any plan to achieve that? 2) What made you focus this website on film news? Are moviegoers more able to comment insightfully on news that is in-the-making? --- [1] This may be the root cause of the decline in the quality of film discussions, like with discussion of many other subjects in our age of social media. Most people do not engage with quality sources, which lowers their expectations for discussions in general. One can still find substantial information in publications that enforce editorial standards, such as trade magazines and journals on film studies.
- zaptrem 2y agoIn the same way Hacker News went after founders and developers on the inside of the big co’s, I wonder if it would be useful for OP to go after filmmakers and those employed by the big studios?
- coolandsmartrr 2y agoBootstrapping like HN would be ideal, since the users knew each other (YC startup founders) and set the tone for an ideal interaction. I'm not sure if there's a completely analogous gathering for film. Furthermore, the communities for film appreciation and film making may behave differently on a film news website. While people who appreciate film can candidly talk about films, people who make films have vested stakes. This can make Filmmakers self-censor their thoughts. (e.g. They don't want to openly criticize a veteran filmmaker, since the veterans might have influence in the younger filmmaker's future production.)
- rglullis 2y agoWhy can't this be a Lemmy instance?
- coolandsmartrr 2y agoI did not know about Lemmy until now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(social_network) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(social_network)
- rglullis 2y agoIf you want, I'd be happy to have you at https://communick.news https://communick.news. Doubly so if you happen to be interested in helping me bootstrap the movie community on https://metacritics.zone/c/movies https://metacritics.zone/c/movies (the movie community on the topic-specific instance that I run.)
- Marciakhan 2y ago[flagged]
- blitzpoet 2y agoThere's also Letterboxd.com. It's like Goodreads but for film buffs. I enjoy that site immensely (I'm a Patron there) and I think this one will compliment it nicely.
- nis0s 2y agoI appreciate the motivation for creating the site. Personally, I like sites with minimal color palettes, like maybe 2-3 muted, unobtrusive colors. The brighter color should be used for highlights or emphasis. But it really depends on how the site balances its layout. Like this one works for me despite not using sans-serif fonts https://longreads.com/picks/ https://longreads.com/picks/
- jeremyswank 2y agoFor me, it only lacks an RSS feed. It's great that you're doing this. It would be more useful to me if it showed up in my feed reader, that is all.