
Ask HN: Alternative HN-Like Communities? - pmohun
I&#x27;ve bounced around my fair share of online forums since ~2006.<p>Inevitably, a shift in culture&#x2F;moderation&#x2F;interests with cause me to seek out new communities. HN has been fairly consistent in it&#x27;s discussion since I&#x27;ve joined, and I&#x27;d like to find some similar sites.
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newsbinator
I've been enjoying the Alpha of [https://Tildes.net](https://Tildes.net)

It's like Reddit for thoughtful content, no fluff.

And so far it's full of hackers and people who think like hackers.

Email the founder for an invite code. He's friendly and engaged.

~~~
modzu
anybody know of communities that dont excessively moderate or censor?

tildes looks interesting but the founder says, "it will also never be
described as anything like "an absolute free speech site".

i would love to find a community that moderates harrassment, actual hate
speech, and threats, but nothing else. for example ive seen comments deleted
here on hn related to drug culture, presumably because a drug is illegal in
the usa.

in other words, a community interested in truth, no matter how messy it is.

~~~
8note
I think this is a good description of why an absolute free speech site will
never flourish: [https://youtu.be/r3snVCRo_bI](https://youtu.be/r3snVCRo_bI)

what you describe is basically just Reddit, but with the people nobody wants
to talk to on Reddit ... so mostly just the people you don't want to talk to
on Reddit talking to each other,which has no mass appeal

~~~
acct1771
"Nobody" except all the people who do.

I personally seek the most undesirable opinions in the depths of the worst
comment sections - because there's knowledge about the world to be gleaned
from all of that that I'll use as a competitive advantage against someone who
couldn't be bothered to read something "icky" for a few seconds.

~~~
krapp
>because there's knowledge about the world to be gleaned from all of that that
I'll use as a competitive advantage against someone who couldn't be bothered
to read something "icky" for a few seconds.

Competitive advantage?

What secret wisdom, exactly, do you think the racists, pedos and trolls of the
web possess and casually discuss that would give you anything of the sort?

People already know what such groups believe and how little value they add to
society. They're not the fucking Illuminati, and you're not breaking new
ground by seeking them out.

~~~
bfuller
That's the thing though. The comments at the bottom aren't only racists pedos
and trolls, there are also valid opinions that the hive mind has rejected.

~~~
krapp
There's no hivemind. Calling an opposing view part of a hivemind implies that
people who disagree with you are either following a script or are incapable of
agency, self-awareness or independent thought, when they simply hold opinions
and values different from your own.

I use HN with showdead on by default, and I sometimes post a userscript for
people to uncensor comments and I've complained about the greying out of
downvoted comments often ... I understand wanting to read everything and make
your own decisions about what's worth reading rather than have others make
them for you. However, most of what winds up flagged deserves to be.

Look at the flagged comment at the bottom of this thread, for example. It's
just a rant against the "global socialist LEFT." There's nothing there that no
one has read before. Even if you agree with the "validity" of the opinion,
it's just stereotypical anti-leftist edgelord nonsense.

And now and then, albeit rarely, perfectly legitimate and inoffensive comments
do get flagged. I try to vouch them when I can. But even then, I have yet to
see anything I'd consider a true jewel in the rough.

There seems to be a trend among people to consider content that goes against
the establishment to be inherently more valuable than that which goes with it,
as if offensiveness maps to truth. Seek the bottom of the barrel out if you
want, but I think it's a mistake to expect enlightenment from it.

~~~
drankula3
On sites like Reddit and HN, hiveminds absolutely occur from the voting
algorithm. Content that caters to the lowest common denominator of the site or
subreddit is what ends up at the top, and people with differing views stop
expressing their views due to social pressure. Plus the owners of all social
media sites have a financial incentive to influence the trends of the site and
its users.

I'm not saying alternative viewpoints and free speech sites are all sugar and
flowers, because they often are filled with deplorable content. I do feel,
however, that they serve a purpose in providing alternatives to the corporate.

------
fghtr
[https://habr.com/en/](https://habr.com/en/)

Russian hacker community; this year they started an English version of the
website (announcement:
[https://habr.com/en/company/tm/blog/435764/](https://habr.com/en/company/tm/blog/435764/)).

------
e1ven
Obviously Reddit, particularly r/programming

Slashdot.org is still around

Metafilter.org is still going

[http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/](http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/)

[https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-
tildes](https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes)

[https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/)

~~~
DarmokJalad1701
Any way to get invites? :)

~~~
aboutruby
The idea is to have a vetted word of mouth so the legitimate way is to
personally know someone who has been invited there.

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thrilleratplay
These are much smaller communities but not a lot of discussion in them.

[https://www.echojs.com](https://www.echojs.com) \- HN for Javascript
[http://www.datatau.com](http://www.datatau.com) \- HN for data science.

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m33k44
Just few weeks ago I started a Slack workspace mvphacks.slack.com for all
developers working on their MVPs, or developers who want to join with other
developers to build their ideas together.

The aim is to allow developers to create their own channel for the project
they are working on. The developers can then post about their project or idea
under the "general" channel to invite others to their channel for
participating in their project or idea.

Here is the invite:
[https://tinyurl.com/ybongxl2](https://tinyurl.com/ybongxl2) in case you want
to join.

------
lainon
Does StackExchange count?

It's been constant quality since it's existence

~~~
ykevinator
Stack exchange is awful. The moderators power has gone to their heads.

~~~
sattoshi
Why do you say this?

~~~
_pmf_
The most interesting questions (which made StackOverflow awesome in the past
would be swiftly closed today because they are not specific enough or are
highly opinionated. They are free to do so, of course, but it's a bit sad.

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reilly3000
I'm working on developing a new community (currently in stealth mode)
associated with a well-known publication. Please let me know what you would
like in a community forum (Discourse based). We're #deplatforming and want to
make a place where great discussions happen.

~~~
danvayn
The discourse community is in desperate need of more plugin development I
think. Maybe your forum can foster some discussion on plugins or some in a
subcategory or something. Alternatively, it could be a subcategory to
specifically discuss discourse, as I feel like there could probably be more
places to do that. I just think discussion on discourse is probably shut down
a little quickly on the actual forum and that organic discussion from HN-type
posters might lead to something that could benefit discourse admins who are
interested in more, I guess you could say creative? uses for discourse. Theres
just a big hole where bots and category customization and feature toggling
could be, and I feel like Im probably not the only discourse admin who thinks
that.

~~~
mk4p
Curious about this - could you give some detail about what would be useful?
Not a huge discourse user myself... (I can be reached at mk@{my-hn-
username}.com

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muvek
Prismo ([https://prismo.news/](https://prismo.news/)) will soon be opened to
the public as far as I know. Code is on gitlab:
[https://gitlab.com/mbajur/prismo/](https://gitlab.com/mbajur/prismo/)

It is a project I've been following and seems pretty interesting. A federated
reddit alternative, part of the fediverse.

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dhruvkar
[https://www.spane.org](https://www.spane.org)

It's a fledgling community for social entrepreneurs. (full disclosure: I
started the site).

It has yet to gain traction, but HN is what prompted me start this in the
social impact space.

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jammygit
I meant to ask this myself. Maybe I'm just scared hn will go away one day and
I won't have somewhere else to go

I found mewe has a couple of good groups. They're a bit small, but some really
smart, nice people in them

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tnolet
On Reddit, the /devops sub is pretty good. Very low fluff, no link spamming.
Very different from the overrun /webdev or /programming.

~~~
jcims
100k subscribers seems to be the point, more or less, where the community
aspects of a subreddit starts to go downhill. If you can avoid/unsubscribe
those, it can be a decent place.

Also, tacking /comments on to your subreddit url will show the most recent
comments. This is pretty handy for finding the conversations in otherwise slow
subreddits.

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rinze
For me, the best discussions lately have always happened in mailing lists,
where there are no points system and patrons ignore useless threads.

------
juststeve
Time to build one

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qnsi
Is there anything for startups?

~~~
wyem
The community at indiehackers.com is quite helpful.

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bitdeep
For Nomads and Travelling:
[https://nomadlist.com/forum/](https://nomadlist.com/forum/) For Low Level
Geeks: [https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/)

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throg
/prog/

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rambojazz
reddit (some), lobste.rs, voat, freepo.st

~~~
ausbah
voat is a dumpster fire full of nothing but racists, conspiracy nutjobs, and
people with less than desirable views

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qznc
[https://www.laarc.io/](https://www.laarc.io/)

"laarc is a tech mashup of Hacker News and Reddit by two long time fans of
both forums.

The initial impetus behind the site is a desire to try to recapture the early
spirit of Hacker News. HN currently has about 5 million visitors a month. It's
different than it was back in the day when it was a much smaller group of
people.

We're aiming for a cross between Pinboard and HN: a central place for all your
bookmarks, with the ability to make private submissions. (pg mentioned that he
used HN for all of YC's internal software in the early days; it's handy to
have a place to keep all of your notes!)"

~~~
modzu
so what differentiates it from hn? it looks much like a clone to me

~~~
DoreenMichele
It's going to fundamentally be a different group of people and that will make
it different.

Some technical differences:

It uses _tags_ to try to categorize stuff somewhat. Unlike on HN, your
_threads_ page also has links to your posts, a feature I requested probably at
a point where it was basically me and the guy coding it up kicking around
ideas for a forum.

It's grown substantially in a short period of time, but it's still very new
and if you want to shape a forum into a place with the kinds of discussion
that interests you, it's an opportunity to do that.

~~~
krapp
>It's going to fundamentally be a different group of people and that will make
it different.

Isn't it literally just HN users who know about it from here and the Arc
forum?

~~~
qnsi
I think you are right. Still for me, tagging is a killer feature. I am here
only for /l/startups

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sureaboutthis
I'm not kidding. I just came here from writing, elsewhere, about this very
topic and mentioned that I thought HN has drifted--liberal, left leaning--over
the years but not as bad as most and doesn't seem to have as many posts by kid
pretenders.

~~~
callekabo
Agree, there's clearly more left-leaning stuff on here than other positions.

------
rurban
Quora, at least better than Stackexchange.

~~~
sattoshi
Quora is pretty terrible. Loaded or stupid questions answered by some
pretentious book seller.

