hn really ended up replacing Slashdot for me. Disappointingly, I took a look at /. in the past month and realized I hadn't even loaded it out in 4+ years.
Ideal would be hn style sites, decentralized like forums, and managed by individual communities. Then, stick to a standard, unlike the old phpBB, vBulletin, etc, so there can be some level of access by API.
What you're describing sounds a bit like Lemmy [0].
In essence it's a federated reddit.
Anyone can host their own instance with its own rules/topic. And each instance can have communities (subreddits).
You can subscribe/comment to any of the other instances' "subreddits" from your own instance.
Ideal would be hn style sites, decentralized like forums, and managed by individual communities. Then, stick to a standard, unlike the old phpBB, vBulletin, etc, so there can be some level of access by API.