3 ms·

Someone did briefly run an "Academic Hacker News" about 5 years ago (on HN's arc software). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506064 https://news.ycombinato

• j2kun 12y ago
  It looks like this page focused mostly on posting introductory textbooks, and not so much on discourse. If you used this site when it was alive, did you feel this was characteristic of the site? (and not just a particular snapshot that happened to have the front page full of books)
  • imurray 12y ago
    The intention (3rd link) was for papers and discussion. There were probably more comments in the first few days before interest fizzled. Gaining critical mass is hard.
    • j2kun 12y ago
      I think a site organized around "links to papers" would have an even harder time gaining critical mass because people find out about papers in so many ways (word of mouth, conferences, blogs, arXiv), and the "best" ways to find out about papers that you'd then devote a long time to reading usually need serious motivation (great talk, met an author, know you need to learn a technique) rather than a random link.