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Daniel is proposing to create a HN-like site to aggregate interesting hacker news and writers that no one else is serving. He proposes some variation on the HN

by russell 18y ago

Daniel is proposing to create a HN-like site to aggregate interesting hacker news and writers that no one else is serving. He proposes some variation on the HN karma system because it's an itch he wants to scratch. Some experiments: no down modding,karma is fungible,tunable aggregation, finding little seen material, and making it more sociable. If he can create a site with good, people, good material, and good discussions, I say more power to him. Of his 6 bullet points, "There's good material out there nobody is using" is the only one that strikes me as significant. This is the hard one because he will have to activelh dig it out. I dont think automatic aggregation will do the trick. Does he need more on the social side than HN provides? Just contact info for those who want to be contacted or maybe RSS feeds for particular commentors. So let me give a couple of niche areas that I am interested in. I am wallowing alone in the complexity of the Jboss/hibernalte/spring/struts stack. What are others doing? Collect entrepreneurial best practices. Browser side best practices or programming techniques. What's new on the programming language front, particularly concurrent programming? OK that's 4 suggestions.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Thanks for the validation on the "there's good material out there that nobody is using" point, russell. I'm still working on ideas for collection, but I know an easy way to filter: simply refuse submission from any of the top 10K internet sites or so. What would a news aggregation site look like without material from Engadget, CNN, NYT, etc but yet with stuff you really enjoy reading? Is such a thing possible? Or in other words, does the popularity of the source determine how much you enjoy reading the content, and not the content itself? Kind of like the expensive wine taste tests, where people consistently view expensive wine as tasting better but only after somebody tells them the price! I don't know. I do know that it's been bugging me.
- russell 18y ago
  10K top sites seems like an awfully large ban, so I would edit the list to allow interesting sites. Another tactic would to subscribe to feeds from particularly interesting sites, maybe filtering them for content length. For example, take joelonsoftware. He has interesting things to say, but most of his posts are there to keep the site fresh and should not be aggregated. As for what I am looking for, I want information about techniques and developments in the software development and web entrepreneurial spaces. Popularity is probably a negative, because I have already seen it elsewhere. I value commentary. I read the comments on HN before I read the story to see if it is worth the investment of my time. I also do first comments as a kind of payback. An interesting twist on HN would be to require a comment on a submitted article rather than prohibiting it. That might be an effective junk filter.
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    Yep, you're right. Perhaps only 1K sites as a rule. I also like the idea of getting feeds and just manually sorting through them. I firmly believe that there's a mix between old-fashioned editing, user-editing, and user-submissions that hasn't been tried yet. Seems like everybody wants to do one or the other, when mixing them up might be the best solution. Perhaps an editor scours the top-hundred or so sites in a niche, along with user submissions. After the editor is finished, users can validate or not the entries based on feedback, like you said. At the end of the day, how many articles do you really need to provide the average reader? It can't be that many. If you can find four or five truly unique and high quality articles for a reader each day, I think you'll build a loyal following. So the goal is to have zillions of articles enter, but only a few appear to the reader. I don't think "herd mentality" or voting systems are the way to sort that data. There has to be a better way. Good stuff to think about.
    - russell 18y ago
      You probably need to allow more than 4 or 5 per day to encourage your readers to submit stories. I would suggest putting featured stories at the top and other noteworthy submissions below or on anther page. People really like to see their names in lights. Some concession to that will encourage that. Of course the downside is more trash. HN survives by the diligence of its community. Manual moderation should work well too.

by russell 18y ago

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

Thanks for the validation on the "there's good material out there that nobody is using" point, russell. I'm still working on ideas for collection, but I know an easy way to filter: simply refuse submission from any of the top 10K internet sites or so. What would a news aggregation site look like without material from Engadget, CNN, NYT, etc but yet with stuff you really enjoy reading? Is such a thing possible? Or in other words, does the popularity of the source determine how much you enjoy reading the content, and not the content itself? Kind of like the expensive wine taste tests, where people consistently view expensive wine as tasting better but only after somebody tells them the price! I don't know. I do know that it's been bugging me.

russell 18y ago
10K top sites seems like an awfully large ban, so I would edit the list to allow interesting sites. Another tactic would to subscribe to feeds from particularly interesting sites, maybe filtering them for content length. For example, take joelonsoftware. He has interesting things to say, but most of his posts are there to keep the site fresh and should not be aggregated. As for what I am looking for, I want information about techniques and developments in the software development and web entrepreneurial spaces. Popularity is probably a negative, because I have already seen it elsewhere. I value commentary. I read the comments on HN before I read the story to see if it is worth the investment of my time. I also do first comments as a kind of payback. An interesting twist on HN would be to require a comment on a submitted article rather than prohibiting it. That might be an effective junk filter.
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Yep, you're right. Perhaps only 1K sites as a rule. I also like the idea of getting feeds and just manually sorting through them. I firmly believe that there's a mix between old-fashioned editing, user-editing, and user-submissions that hasn't been tried yet. Seems like everybody wants to do one or the other, when mixing them up might be the best solution. Perhaps an editor scours the top-hundred or so sites in a niche, along with user submissions. After the editor is finished, users can validate or not the entries based on feedback, like you said. At the end of the day, how many articles do you really need to provide the average reader? It can't be that many. If you can find four or five truly unique and high quality articles for a reader each day, I think you'll build a loyal following. So the goal is to have zillions of articles enter, but only a few appear to the reader. I don't think "herd mentality" or voting systems are the way to sort that data. There has to be a better way. Good stuff to think about.
  - russell 18y ago
    You probably need to allow more than 4 or 5 per day to encourage your readers to submit stories. I would suggest putting featured stories at the top and other noteworthy submissions below or on anther page. People really like to see their names in lights. Some concession to that will encourage that. Of course the downside is more trash. HN survives by the diligence of its community. Manual moderation should work well too.