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Poll: Would HN benefit from Reddit's AMA-style posts from technologists?
On Reddit, just from this month alone, there have been some great AMAs that I personally think HN would be great participants in:
Stevin Levitt from Freakonomics http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18tp7t/i_am_steven_levitt_author_of_freakonomics_ask_me/
Bill Gates http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/
Peter Sunde of ThePirateBay http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/187iwo/i_am_peter_sunde_cofounder_of_tpb_ama/
SpaceX Software Engineers http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1853ap/we_are_spacex_software_engineers_we_launch/
Do you think this this is something we could start on HackerNews?
- netaustin 14y agoI'm an infrequent enough Reddit user that their odd argot and mile-long discussions about ponies are really a disincentive for me to read past the intro to an AMA. Using HN for topically relevant AMAs provide a welcome relief from Reddit's tiresome fractals of inane comments.
- guelo 14y agoThe trick is to set reddit preferences to only show comments rated 10 or higher. That'll cut down on most of the garbage, though you'll still get a lot of highly rated "funny" posts. But you can just minimize a thread once it starts devolving into nonsense.
- sirhacksalot 14y agoNo, we need Reddit's r/gonewild instead
- stephengillie 14y agoIsn't that what Quora was made for? To have longer Q&A style discussions with other HNers and (legitimate) technology celebrities? Edit: I guess the downvotes mean I'm wrong?
- achompas 14y agoQuora is most definitely not for this, although it's a potential side effect. I'd argue it's actually the opposite: by design, Quora focuses on a single question open to answers by any number of users that do not have to be the question's target.
- meritt 14y agoQuora is basically Experts Exchange 2.0. One of the biggest letdowns given the build-up and expectations it once had.
- duggieawesome 14y agoHa. Quora's signin/signup wall is enough for me not to use it.
- stephengillie 14y agoThe modal signup wrapper? If I want to read the article, I'll pull it out with console.
- pseut 14y agoI think the down votes mean (some) people really hate Quora. E.g. Recently: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217052 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217052
- adelevie 14y agoWhy this poll? I'm sure there'd be no problem if tomorrow morning we see "I'm #{@name}, founder of #{@awesome_thing}, AMA".
- trbs 14y agoI'd imagine the main reason is just to promote the idea so people with connections might ask their connections to do an AMA.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoSome folks want HN to be sort of a super subreddit.
- cabalamat 14y agoWe already have a site for that, it's called Reddit. I get the impression that most HNers are also Redditors, so doing AMAs on Reddit makes more sense than trying to make HN into Reddit.
- nathanpc 14y agoI like the idea of having AMAs here in HN.
- tcdent 14y agoI think you wanted the first option of the poll: "Yes"
- davidw 14y agoThere are already a bunch of well known "technologists" who don't just show up to do one Q&A session, but regularly participate in the community, which is, IMO, even better.
- greendestiny 14y agoAnd I'd rather they didn't think about going on HN as doing some media. Maybe we've reached that point anyway, but that would be a shame.
- enraged_camel 14y agoProblem is that it's not immediately obvious who they are just from their usernames. So it's easy to skip over their contributions.
- lmm 14y agoThat can enhance the discussion. I remember making a spirited reply to Yudkowsky and only noticing who he was when he replied back - but I think my not being intimidated lead to a far more productive thread than if I had seen in the first place. Posts should rise or fall on their own merits, not who has made them.
- switz 14y agoThis is my favorite recent example of someone not being recognized http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5228841 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5228841
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- codeulike 14y agoHere, I think it would end up more like "Argue with me about anything". Might still be fun though.
- dm2 14y agoMaybe an "Discussion" section of HN and leave the main board for true "News"?
- bsimpson 14y agoIt could be interesting, but I think Reddit is much better suited to multi-party discussions than HN. Reddit's commenting system is easier to navigate (cf. the hide button).
- nolok 14y agoAs long as we don't get a daily AMA for every single startup founder out there ... Reddit already has quite a few of those amadverts.
- naner 14y agoThere's a lot of work and coordination (scheduling, moderation, proof) involved in the IAMA subreddit. I'm not sure we are interested in or capable of organizing all of that here. Also reddit has a much wider audience. Having IAMA's here instead of reddit would only make sense for less widely known tech-centric folks. Also keep in mind that there have been a couple sites (startups?) that tried to replicate the reddit IAMA format and basically they all went nowhere. This is one thing reddit is pretty good at, that is hard to replicate, and that there is not much of a reason to replicate here.
- RivieraKid 14y agoI wish HN had followable tags.
- recoiledsnake 14y agoThe idea sounds great, but there is a big caveat. I think it will draw a lot of crowd to HN, which PG wouldn't like. One one hand you need to keep the registrations open for newcomers to ask good questions, on the other hand a lot of signups will be from a section of Redditors not used to HN etiquette. I remember that signups are sometimes disabled on HN whenever there is a popular link to here from Reddit. Also, HN has no means right now of highlighting the submitter of the post, unlike on Reddit.
- rednukleus 14y agoI think signups are an interesting point. Nobody wants the site to be diluted too quickly and lose what makes it good, but I do think that a wider userbase would be a good thing for HN to stop it from being as much of an echo chamber as it often is.
- mwilcox 14y agoA wider userbase only exacerbates the echo chamber, as the most popular, agreeable, easily consumed content rises to the top much faster.
- bthomas 14y agoI'd rather focus on ideas than personalities. What about "ask me anything about X", where X is a software package/device/publication/etc.
- pseut 14y agoAs in [show hn]?
- HunterV 14y agoOnly if there was some way to monitor the quality of the people doing AMA.
- dm2 14y agoShould this community worry about attracting the wrong crowd? If everyone and their moms start getting attracted to this site then could that not start reducing the voting power of people who are actually interested in technology? Listen, the only thing I'm trying to do is prevent this community from turning into Cats and Porn like reddit has become. Lots of well known people participate in the discussion and will answer questions if you ask them. Maybe HN needs better searching and filtering capabilities first.
- paulkaplan 14y agoI would really appreciate that because I am a senior in college and I'm trying to figure out where I want to go and what type of job would be best.
- frozenport 14y agoWhat question would you ask?
- jcroll 14y agoFrom the HN guidelines: > If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) I would suggest that if you do proceed with the AMA's that you amend the guidelines and remove that clause.
- BSousa 14y agoIn all fairness, shouldn't this be something to ask pg about instead of a poll?
- lessnonymous 14y agoI think the OP realises pg would not go for this easily, so by making a poll that's a ahem run away success the OP hopes to present pg with evidence.
- DanielBMarkham 14y agoWhy don't we let Reddit be Reddit, and HN be HN? Why would I want HN to be a megaphone for Famous Joe Blow X when I'd much rather have him actively participating and helping out in the threads with the rest of us? This is a very bad idea in my opinion. Since I have no clue how to run a busy site, that means it'll probably happen. :)
- d0m 14y agoIt can be both. An AMA is "Ask me anything" which is more focused on somebody (Or something that happened).. which is very different than the same person posting a meaningful comment on a discussion. As far as I know, PG regularly comments on HN and there are often links to his essay or interviews. An AMA isn't so much different than an interview...
- saraid216 14y agoTo me, it would be ideal if AMAs were split off into their own site, rather than piggybacking off HN or Reddit. Same with ELI5. (Also, the meta-implications of the fact that this poll is asking about AMAs rather than ELI5 amuses me.)
- antoko 14y agoELI5: what are the meta implications that amuse you - for someone that just had to google "ELI5" :) (explain like I'm 5)
- dfc 14y agoI too had to lookup ELI5 and am at a complete loss regarding any implications, meta or otherwise.
- saraid216 14y agoThe implication is that HNers are more interested in Q&A sessions over what amounts to a lecture. You could frame that as positively or negatively as you like: a fixation on fame and fortune over substance; a disinterest in having someone else explain what you could learn on your own; a preference for an interactive setting rather than a receptive one; etc.
- fryed7 14y agoWe ran AMA's on Inbound.org over the last month and they were a terrific success from an engagement point of view. They unearth fascinating content. Dharmesh Shah's probably was the best example of what an HN audience might have asked: http://www.inbound.org/discussion/view/hi-i-m-dharmesh-shah-founder-cto-of-hubspot-ask-me-anything http://www.inbound.org/discussion/view/hi-i-m-dharmesh-shah-... I love this kind of open media, open interviewing. Sometimes "regular interviews" bring up your burnings questions, or something else you find really interesting, but the chance to talk to real experts about questions specific to your interests is pretty damn cool.
- drgath 14y agoJust create the AMA on http://reddit.com/r/hackernews http://reddit.com/r/hackernews and link to it from here. It keeps Reddit over on Reddit, but still provides interesting content for HN to link to.
- The1TrueGuy 14y agoWell, the only way for that to work thematically is if the person is in fact a hacker. I use a pretty broad interpretation which would include Bill Gates but probably leave out Steven Levitt unless he was going to discuss/share the software tools he uses to arrive at his results. Also, more physical hackers like Adrian Bowyer of RepRap and some of the guys behind the Hacklabs and Hackerspaces.
- SCdF 14y agoSo the thing that struck me when I first started reading HN was that this place is a constant AMA with famous people! Real people, real hackers, who've done impressive stuff, who aren't random bored teenagers in their boxers pretending to know about what they're waxing on about, comment here! People from Google, and MS, People who actually built the startup we're discussing, or are at the heart of the story that brought us here. And they're here, not because they really just want to talk about Rampart[0], but because they're hackers too, and they want to contribute to the mass discussions happening every day on HN. [0] http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/woody-harrelson-reddit-ama http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/woody-harrelson-reddit-...
- DanielBMarkham 14y agoYeah and I want to say this the right way, but I probably won't. I don't give a shit who you are on HN. I'm here to collect useful stuff for the people I'm trying to help in my startups, not to get autographs. If you have something useful to contribute, thank you. I'll try to do the same. Otherwise? Who you are, how much you make, how much you sold out for, all of that? Not so much. This is just an awful, terrible, bad idea. Instead of us old-timers saying "Dang site! Turning into Reddit!" Now we're going to actively start trying to copy Reddit? WTF?
- SCdF 14y agoIn case it's not obvious from the juxtaposition of our two posts, I completely agree. Having "tech famous" people on HN is great not because they're tech famous, but because they can provide the sorts of information that made them tech famous (as in, they're smart / knowledgeable). It's not important that they're famous, it's important that they can often provide insight into what we're talking about, because they were / are involved. Reddit AMAs, when they're about a specific person (as opposed to a profession) seem to mostly be "You're awesome, I just wanted to ask, how did you get so awesome?" and variants.
- rustynails77 14y ago>seem to mostly be "You're awesome, I just wanted to ask, how did you get so awesome?" To be fair, that's why I come to HN instead of Reddit (which I NEVER visit). HN is an amazing site with many high quality posts - I think Reddit at the opposite end of the spectrum - because that's what it was when I last looked at it years ago. A variant of this idea by the OP could work if it was handled correctly - for example, if Richard Branson was invited to talk about establishing successful corporate cultures. If there was an emphasis on a specific individual with a specific topic, then this could work. Lastly, please don't turn HN into Reddit. I honestly believe this would kill the exact thing that makes this site unique.
- charlieok 14y agoWas Reddit's AMA feature a result of paving the cowpaths? I'm thinking of it as something that organically sprouted from the community, and then became an institution. Kinda like hashtags and @-mentions on twitter. If people post AMA submissions on Hacker News and they do well, great. That's a sign the users would like more of it. Or are these being actively discouraged by admins (e.g. by editing “AMA” out of titles)?
- nolok 14y agoAMAs where just post on /r/AskReddit for a long time until starting to grow on its own and becoming what it is now.
- snowwrestler 14y agoYes. At first the appeal of the AMA was the insight it provided into the lives of other redditors who just happened to have an interesting job or experience. It was only after it became "a thing" organically that it started to become a PR tool for celebrities and politicians--a direction that sadly seems to be accelerating.
- fudged71 14y agoI was recently wondering if "Moronic Mondays" (as featured in /r/Android and such) would be useful here. It's a good way to shed your ego and say "I have a question that I know seems stupid and simple, but I just can't wrap my head around it". Coincidentally, I implemented the IAmA star verification system years ago which seemed to popularize the entire IAmA community.
- icedog 14y agoBigger problem at hand: too much non-technology related articles are being posted on Hacker News.
- zalzane 14y agoI agree. The articles on intellectual property and patent law seem to have paved the way for off-topic political articles.
- mindcrime 14y agoIt's not just "non technology" it's "non technology" AND "non useful startup / business" stuff. To me, those areas, and - most importantly - the intersection of those two areas, are the best part of HN. But articles that veer off into mainstream politics, and some of the vapid "startup lite" entreporn that get posted, seem to be rising in frequency here. Or maybe it's just that my tastes have changed, but it does seem to me that things are already starting to get somewhat watered down. Given that, I think I should have voted "no" on this poll (I voted "maybe" because I wasn't really sure at first).
- DanBC 14y agoI know timing has a lot to do with number of upvotes, but I posted an off-topic[1] article that got 59 votes and over 100 comments (and, thankfully, was heavily flagged); and I posted an on-topic article that got 4 votes and no comments. It's easy to see why bad articles get posted. [1] I was under the influence of Zopiclone!
- andymoe 14y agoI'm not sure you could do better than what Andrew Warner has done with http://mixergy.com http://mixergy.com I know a lot of the older ones are behind a paywall now but there are 100s of interesting folks he has interviewed over the last few years. Edit: Over 800 interviews. Truly impressive.
- kjackson2012 14y agoNo, because HN doesn't have a good way to manage comments the way Reddit can. In Reddit, it's easy to close an entire thread if you're not interested in it, but HN natively does not have this facility. I've seen some hacks that allow this, but if it were available natively on HN, it would make perusing the comments a lot easier.
- pbiggar 14y agoI dont think this will be added in the near future, so you might enjoy the HN enhancement suite: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bappiabcodbpphnojd...
- radley 14y agoOne of the most fun and interesting parts of participating in YC were the weekly dinners w/ guest speakers. Perhaps something similar might be appropriate, i.e. a weekly IAmA related to start-ups / hacker culture.
- sushaantmujoo 14y agoAmA on HN will be more effective as people on reditt, do tend to troll around on some questions. That said, it would be better to have a collaboration with reditt to allow general users to join in as well.
- niggler 14y agoWhat I would like to see (if we are having a meta conversation on HN) is a view for the "Show HN" posts (like the "Ask" link above). What I enjoy the most here are the posts where people show cool stuff they've done, and it would be nice to have a separate view just for those (when I don't feel like wading through articles covering the Tesla/NYT scandal or whatever is the melodrama of the week)
- peterfschaadt 14y agoHave you checked out http://www.hnshowcase.com http://www.hnshowcase.com? While it's a separate site, they have a collection updated daily featuring Show HN posts.
- niggler 14y agoThe infinite scroll bothers me (an option to fallback to a text list would be nice) but otherwise this is basically what I've been looking for :)
- dylangs1030 14y agoI voted No. I think it would be a distraction, although you could probably find willing candidates. Hacker News is not as large as Reddit, and I think it's more useful to have everyone on a more or less equal level. It's a simple community for technical and technology news matters. We have an Ask feature, but I also wouldn't recommend instituting a system similar to StackOverflow (even though we probably have a higher average level of technical ability on HN).
- jpittman 14y agoNo.
- huhsamovar 14y agoPlease, stop these polls. Nothing comes of them.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mmphosis 14y agoYes, I think people on Hacker News might benefit from "Hacker News"-style AMA posts from technologists and investors. The technologists and investors needn't be so high-profile. Reddit's Bill Gates AMA was great. And I'd also like to hear from smaller-profile founders, investors, developers involved in open source projects, and other like-minded hackers, if they'd be willing to be asked anything.
- olleicua 14y agoI really like this idea but I'm not clear on how this would fit into the current UI. Reddit does threads a little better I feel.
- jlarocco 14y agoThis doesn't make sense to me. First, I'm not sure there's anything stopping people from doing this now. Can't a person submit an "AMA-style" HN article already? And on the end user side, if a person is interested in AMA-style posts, can't they just go to Reddit? What's the point of "me too" HN AMAs when Reddit's already doing a good job of it.
- rckrd 14y agoAs said earlier comments, I think that the best way for HN to operate is for those people to participate indirectly in the community (by commenting or submitting). Personally, I think its a more interesting way to learn and reveals a more genuine image of a person.
- lazugod 14y agoNo. AMAs perpetuate the idea that the people who move the earth are normally unapproachable.
- epicwhaleburger 14y agoNo, I feel that this website shouldn't follow reddit, but instead maybe try something diffrent
- suyash 14y agoGreat point, we should do something uniquely HN.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jlgreco 14y agoHN's borked 'more' link makes very large discussions very... difficult. I don't think this sort of post could work well on HN until that issue is fixed, regardless of if we think it is a good idea.
- whiddershins 14y agoSomething about the AMA format, at least on reddit, I have trouble finding the real "nuggets" of insight which I somehow expect. I think the threaded forum structure isn't so great for a freeform Q&A.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- yock 14y agoNo, because I don't think Hacker News needs to copy features from another community.
- vanilla 14y agonot with the current comment system
- swalsh 14y agoOne of the great parts of HN is the subdued conversation. It would be great to have say a Bill Gates AMA without the "Can you give me a million dollars" questions.
- jgrahamc 14y agoNo, I like how HN works right now. I'm here. That's like me saying "Hi, I'm jgrahamc, AMA"
- rm999 14y agoAsk me anything VS discuss the topic at hand leads to two very different discussions. In an AMA the point would be for us to ask you questions, whereas if I started asking you questions here most would probably be deemed off-topic.
- shanelja 14y agoSince this seems to be a meta discussion about the goings on of HN now, I just wanted to thank you, a month or so ago you gave me some positive criticism on the entropy behind my companies password protection scheme - since then it has been completely rehashed.
- manicdee 14y agoNo, you will be diluting your brand. Pick one thing to do and do it well. If you want AMA, head to Reddit. They already do that.
- thethomaseffect 14y agoYes, but leave the visionaries and successful entrepreneurs the door. I want to hear from engineers and creative people who've built something interesting and really get a chance to ask them about the nitty gritty of it. HN comments often become more interesting that the topic linked, directing that discussion isn't a bad thing at all.
- scythe 14y agoCheap content attracts cheap commenters. The comments and questions in AMAs rarely express novel insight -- usually, someone pipes up with a popular sentiment, like asking President Obama to stop using drone strikes. Commenting in such threads, which are inevitably mobbed, gives you the illusion of significance ("Wow, X answered my question!") or worse yet they give you actual significance ("Wow, it's X, he did an AMA") both of which function as an invitation to horse-sized-duck trolling and celebrity obsession. Do we want the users who join because Tim Cook did an AMA here once, or people who join to discuss hacking? As the old saying goes: small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas. HN has always been a place for great minds -- let's keep it that way.
- daniel-cussen 14y agoWhat if you required a certain amount of points or more to ask a question? HN already has good software to deal with voting rings, so we shouldn't get too much karma whoring in response. Plus, people would have to invest in karma, because once the AMA is announced for the following day, or for right then, it's too late to get 300 (say) more points. I think it's workable.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tribe 14y agoThere have been a number of posts about letting Reddit be Reddit and HN be HN, but I think that problems with the level of questions on Reddit is the reason that HN should do them; to provide a more serious place for discussions with these people. It isn't totally uncommon for important people to be on HN already to talk about something they have written, and I think the community has benefited from that. The point isn't to talk about people, its to talk about ideas with "great minds"
- chrismarlow9 14y agoI'm afraid if it happens, HN will be crowded with people that just got their first job and want to know how to build a website on godaddy and sell it to google.
- thesharp 14y agoYes.
- chc 14y agoI don't see the point. Hacker News already has lots of interesting comments from technologists, and you can ask them anything (relevant) just by posting a reply.
- specialist 14y agoSlashdot Answers are superior to Reddit's AMA. Slashdot solicits questions, people vote, guest is asked to answer the top 10. Quite rewarding. Reddit AMAs feel like drive bys. Guests select a few questions to answer. Very casual. Very low signal to noise. Reddit AMAs are almost as content-free as Presidential debates in the USA.
- Apreche 14y agoYes, but they must be actual technologists. I don't want to hear from start-up business people.
- DanBC 14y agoNo. HN already has an equivalent in "Show HN". Show HN has the advantage of having some code / stack / tech / something to be discussed.
- ketralnis 14y agoNo, I don't think that sites like HN should be governed by poll results.
- crazirican 14y agoYes, if the persons doing the AMA's are of value.
- nathan_f77 14y agoNo, I read both Reddit and Hacker News, and would prefer AMAs to stay on Reddit where they have a much bigger audience. Don't try and compete with Reddit, that ship has sailed.
- mynameishere 14y agoAMAs are absolutely worthless. The POTUS did one on reddit and it was a dose of Valium for all involved.
- shitlord 14y agoWhenever there's an AMA on reddit from someone interesting, the scum floats to the top. Occasionally, you get something interesting but most of the time the AMAs are vapid. When a politician does an AMA, people upvote questions about weed or posts complaining that the US is a police state. When Paul Krugman did an AMA, libertarians raided the thread, downvoted all of the other questions, and upvoted stupid shit like questions about the legitimacy of Austrian economics.
- Sakes 14y agoThere is something natural about HN. Something in the way that it has grown, slow and organically. I can not imagine that a handful of threads started by celebrities would increase the value of HN significantly. But I could see a handful of celebrity threads bringing in large groups of new users, which I think could threaten the community's standards of comment quality. I've never successfully grown a community, but my personal theory is start with a quality base, and slowly trickle in new users so that they are able to naturally recognize the expectations of the community through existing comments. If you have a big influx of new users, you have a big influx of new comments with no understanding of what a good comment is.
- pasbesoin 14y agoHN is more about topic, not personality. I like Bill Shatner just fine, but I think we should leave him to Reddit. (Unless he shows up here on his own... Doing any startups, Bill?) I prefer it the way it is, when something will be posted and suddenly founder or community leader(s) X will pop up with a comment: Additionally... | I remember when... | We're excited... | Hey, didn't expect this... | "Under construction"... | It's coming... | The dog ate my homework, and two days later... Followed by 'I/We'll be around for awhile [on this thread], in case any of you have questions or feedback.'
- wisechengyi 14y agotricky bastard haha. this is the AMA!
- mtthw 14y agoYes, but not in excess.
- thechut 14y agoDon't talk about Fight Club
- JacobAldridge 14y agoAs I write this, the Yes vote is clearly leading (~1350 v ~500) but the first page of comments are almost exclusively No. If that's indicative of who we are - those engaging in discussion say No and those happier to just answer a poll question say Yes - then I definitely hope the end result is No. Edit: FWIW, I've seen links to a few Reddit AMAs on the front page here, and clicked through to some as a result. There's no either/or discussion here - we already have both. I see no incentive to change this.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- lessnonymous 14y agoMy take on this: * Those that put in enough to just 'click' say yes. * Those who want to participate in the conversation say 'no'. To commit at least one logical fallacy: Those who would participate in the AMA intelligently say 'no'.
- tferris 14y agoHN's karma system already makes reputation often more important than the actual message. I think an HN AMA would strengthen this, so I'd suggest to stick to good contents and not focussing to much on the author's identity (since the best contributions come from anonymous accounts).
- frogpelt 14y agoNo. Reddit works for this because there are enough dumb questions to answer. Most of HN is too complicated to stick to simple concepts like asking Bill Gates "How much money is in your wallet?"
- unimpressive 14y agoThis isn't Reddit. If HN can't attract interesting characters for an extended stay then it has already failed, and we can go pack our bags.
- emilioolivares 14y agoYes! Not only technologists, but founders, CTO's, engineers at big companies, etc. etc.
- eranki 14y agoI think the benefit would be that people will ask more in-depth subject questions rather than "getting-to-know-you" type questions (to which we would get answers too short to satisfy). I think HN has become increasingly focused on people rather than ideas and this would exacerbate the problem. IMO this should be news FOR hackers, not news ABOUT hackers. AMAs would also largely be posted by people with a self-promotional interest (for the benefit of either themselves or their company) and upvoted by their voterings. Reddit AMAs seem like much more of a favor to the audience in comparison.
- djt 14y agoWilliam Shatner had an interesting comment on Reddit when asked about doing an AMA. Basically he said he'd rather hang out and naturally interact with the audience rather than do a hit and run AMA for an hour then never come back.
- malandrew 14y agoYes, so long as it includes people like: Hal Abelson, Peter Norvig, Tim Berners-Lee, Fred Brooks, Vinton Cerf, John Cormack, Brendsn Eich, Doug Engelbart, Alan Kay, Daniel P. Friedman, Richard P. Gabriel, jwz, Dan Ingalls, C.A.R. Hoare, Bill Joy, etc. etc. etc.
- adamfe 14y agoYes.
- redDragon 14y agoNo, HN is not Reddit
- pcg 14y agoI've been reading HN for years and registered just so that I could vote "no". My "no" is somewhere between "no megaphone" and "no naval-gazing". The community has always been more interesting for its own commentary than for the topic at hand, and making this a blog platform for others doesn't really fit with that.
- chrismarlow9 14y agoThere is a website for this. It is Quora. The people who are famous and great tech people pick the questions they want to answer. A specific thread dedicated to the person is a bad idea and draws unwanted users. Letting these people pick which threads they want to respond to is the way to do it, which is something HN/Reddit/and Quora are setup for.
- wuntee 14y agoNo, thats what reddits for.
- hardik988 14y agoNobody will believe me, but I just came to post this. Experienced programmers have so much to offer to young programmers. I even came up with a name for it - progrAMA
- lessnonymous 14y agoAn AMA with people like these would be awesome! I wonder if we could get them into a forum where anyone from HN (and anyone who happens by) could ask them anything. We could set up a whole site aimed at it. Maybe we could call it reddit.com/r/IAmA ???? It would be the perfect place for anyone from HN to ask these people questions! (Seriously: why? If you want to ask these people questions, just ask them on Reddit. Unless you can offer a better experience or audience, there's no win here.)
- potomushto 14y agoHacker News should be made as simple as possible: one page of links only for hackers. (link to AMA is just another link)
- TeamMCS 14y agoYes
- Cushman 14y agoI'd rather see HN move in the direction of Quora: High-quality questions that any notable technologist can answer.
- bonchibuji 14y agoI think it's a good idea as long someone moderates (maybe PG) moderates who all can do it.
- tripzilch 14y agoI don't think HN's comment voting/sorting algorithm is up for AMA style discussions. So often a single top-level reply dominates the discussion. Actually, the sorting part is probably fine. It's hard to judge, anyway. But for an AMA, it's not as much the sorting, but also the interface: Check any random AMA thread on Reddit and try to imagine what it would look like without all the "load more comments" links. Also try to imagine how differently the discussion would flow with all threads and replies completely unfolded. It's a complex and interdependent balance, that, I think, the way it is handled on HN isn't particularly suited for AMA style discussion. The most interesting questions need to float to the top. But without comment folding, the two or three most interesting questions will gather a vibrant discussion and replies, causing many people to not even get past them, and the other questions won't get sorted properly because so much less people vote on them. But, why not get the best of both worlds? Get an interesting person to do an AMA on Reddit, then invite HN to come along for the discussion? For those worried about the quality of discussion, my experience is that the more "grown up" a topic is, the more "grown up" replies you will get (and childish ones voted down), so if you get someone that's big in start-up land, you'd get a good discussion just fine, unlike what you'd get with a pop-star/TV-personality.
- visualR 14y agoIsn't there already enough hero worshiping on HN as it is?
- zokier 14y agoI think the only case where I would like to see AMAs on HN would be AMAs by YC funded startup founders. I mean, that's what the site is ultimately about, networking and getting to know other startups and their people. But AMAs from random (internet) celebrities can stay at Reddit. I see no reason to split them here.
- jiggy2011 14y agoThere already seems to be an informal policy of a permanent IamA PG AMA.
- jkrems 14y agoWhy? Hacker news can link to those discussions on reddit. As you said: There already are great AMAs on reddit and HN links to those.
- moccajoghurt 14y agoJust keep reddit away from Hacker News. Reddit is a horrible place right now and there is no reason to copy it.
- iomike 14y agoNo. Keep Reddit on Reddit. No need for "Le Reddit Army" here.
- napolux 14y agoYES!
- ImprovedSilence 14y agoI voted no. HN doesn't bring the traffic that Reddit does. Let reddit do their thing. It's not like you can't participate in both communities. Like Daniel said above, let reddit be reddit, and hn be hn.
- sibinpthomas 14y agoYes
- kunai 14y agoWhy not leave AMAs where they belong, Reddit? Call me a hipster, but I like the peace, quiet, and esotericism of HN. Adding AMAs would screw everything up; we'd get tons of new signups and the community would be diluted like Reddit is currently. We'd get immaturity in droves. Memes on the HN front page... The thought makes me shudder.
- Carltonian 14y ago"I see the value of an AMA for someone who is never coming back here again but really, is an AMA for someone who is going to stick around necessary? I would much rather just do it more of a grass roots style. Answering things as I go along." - Will I Am Shatner