
Ask HN: HN Alternatives? - jaytee_clone
I love HN.<p>But HN is so news oriented it doesn't give me the kind of hacker/entrepreneur community that I'm envisioning.<p>What are some other sites where hackers/entrepreneur go to just to ...<p>- discuss early stage startup ideas<p>- brainstorm implementations and solutions<p>- give each other feedback on prototypes<p>... as suppose to commenting on news? I guess like a forum?<p>Reading news gets old after a while and makes me feel like I'm just a follower not a leader.<p>I'm planning to start a web community if there isn't one. I did a survey to see if people would be interested here:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358654<p>But that post quickly got drown out by the noon news flood, which is part of the problem that I'm talking about.<p>(P.S. I do go to real-life meetups of hackers/founders. Those are great but scarce. The only good one I have been to so far in the Bay Area is "hackers and founders". And they don't even meet that often in San Francisco.)
======
chime
I love browsing through a tons of different subreddits that have now matured
and grown very interesting. In decreasing order of interest to me:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/longtext/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyofScience/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/math/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/shamelessplug/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/Freethought/>

Not all of these subreddits are busy but it doesn't matter. I have over 50
hand-selected subreddits and even though I removed all of the popular
subreddits (reddit.com, politics, pics etc.), I always see very interesting
articles. And the number of comments in each article is usually between 10-50,
kinda like HN.

If any of the subreddit starts to get too popular and mainstream, usually 2-3
new subreddits popup that are more specific and interesting. Once a week I
spend a few minutes looking for new interesting subreddits.
<http://www.reddit.com/r/newreddits/> helps with that too.

If you really want to start a web-community, just ask for mod permissions on a
few subreddits that interest you. I'd much rather click once to join a
subreddit and view its articles during my regular reddit browsing than go to
whole another site. I wish HN was available as a subreddit. I would never have
to go to another news site.

~~~
dryicerx
[http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade+longtext+programming+...](http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade+longtext+programming+PhilosophyofScience+cogsci+startups+math+compsci+SomebodyMakeThis+browsers+gamedev+shamelessplug+Freethought)

This will aggregate all of those subreddits in to a single view.

~~~
yread
wow this looks surprisingly like hacker news, good choice, chime!

------
icey
I've started going back to reddit, the subreddits seem to do a pretty good job
of staying on-topic these days.

Other than that, <http://allyourstartuparebelongto.us/> looks like it might be
a promising alternative (although I hate the domain name with a passion).

If you like the ISV space, The Business of Software forums are good:
<http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz>

I would like something close to HN from 2 or 3 years ago if anyone happens to
find it:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20071031003304/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071031003304/http://news.ycombinator.com/)

~~~
epi0Bauqu
If you want the HN of 3 years ago, <http://allyourstartuparebelongto.us/> is
for you. I'm looking for a better domain name. Suggestions are welcome. I've
been trying to get startup.co and techstartu.ps, but so far no luck.

The submission/banning criteria is actionable startup advice for tech startup
founders. Relevant tech is OK as long as it directly relates to or is
obviously useful to startups. No news. And no politics, economics, science,
etc. unless it meets the startup criteria.

The site is running open source reddit, so there is ample opportunity to hack
it as well. I've done a few minor things, and I plan to add email
notifications as well. Feel free to fork reddit on github and play around.

~~~
vaksel
tartups.com is available, so you can do what delicious did and have
s.tartups.com

~~~
saikat
Though without the s, tartups.com has some pretty bad connotations.

~~~
swombat
And "Hacker News" doesn't?

~~~
saikat
Not to its target audience, no =).

------
blizkreeg
As a (almost)first-time, solo entrepreneur who is bootstrapping (yes I have
almost everything going against me!), I would really value a community/forum
like this.

There are times when I'd like to discuss things, seek support, and learn from
what others are doing in a more casual setting. HN is great for learning but
as a community for informal discussion, it seems just a tad heavyweight.

~~~
jaytee_clone
We have exactly the same problem. (I'm a solo bootstrapper too).

It sounds like I should just go ahead and start this entrepreneur forum that
I'm envisioning.

~~~
jarsj
no don't do that. if you are solo, you need to be focussed on what you are
building. Creating something of HN scale would consume you and if you just
want a community for few people, just add them to a mailing list or something.

~~~
megamark16
This particular line of discussion prompted me to create a subreddit for us
solo founders. Check it out at <http://www.reddit.com/r/solostartups/> if
you'd like to join in. I may be the only person posting there, but maybe
others in the same boat I'm in will join in as well and we can all support
each other through running a startup (or side project) all alone.

------
tmsh
This is a little off topic. But I was browsing this thread (and enjoying it
per usual), and then I realized that the voting system doesn't have to be one-
dimensional. Imagine voting on a 2- or 3-dimensional axis. In this case, one
might want to 'vote' towards an idea. Like say:

    
    
        [Good idea]
                      
                     [Ignorance]
    
                [Mistake]
    
     [Disagree with idea]
    

It would be more difficult to represent the frontpage, etc. Basically, things
would cluster based on 'goals' or axes or what have you. But it might make
reading things even more easy. It would be sort of tagging meets voting (but
not really 'subject tagging' a la blogs or news websites, but 'response
tagging').

The cool (and time-saving) thing would be that you could drift towards
response tags that interest you as a reader. Per HN topic. And per HN
globally.

Anyway, just an idea if anyone is thinking of experimenting with a new HN....

Ideally, I think you'd make the system as bottom-up as possible. There
wouldn't be a set list of 'response tags' or 'vote tags', but there would be
commonly-used ones that were readily accessible. Anyway, semantic-voting-ish.

------
david927
After almost four years here, I've definitely felt recently that HN has jumped
the shark. I'm also looking for alternatives. allyourstartuparebelongto.us
looks promising.

~~~
ytilibitapmoc
I agree that HN has jumped the shark. As an example case, I dare you to try to
express an opinion on HN which does not toe the party line.

And for those of you about to down-vote this comment: where are the articles
pointing out the problems with HN, where are the articles showing the flaws in
Lisp, where are the articles which denounce venture-capital-funded startups as
the snake-oil of the modern age?

"But those positions are _wrong_!", the puppeteers cry. Really? Last time I
checked, questioning conventional wisdom is what made the modern western world
possible.

~~~
arohner
>Where are the articles showing the flaws in lisp?

Easy. Worse is better:

<http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html>

~~~
jmatt
The source:

<http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html>

I was at the OOPSLA (+- a few years of 2002) where Gabriel denounced being a
programmer and claimed to be a "code poet"... Looking at dreamsongs it looks
like he's mostly followed through on that statement.

------
steveplace
Are you going to the "new" posts and upvoting the topics you feel deserve to
be on the front page?

~~~
jaytee_clone
Yes. I don't really see how this solves my problem though.

The design of HN is news oriented, not discussion or community oriented. And
because it doesn't have categories, when the amount of submission reaches a
certain size, up-voting "new" posts has marginal effect compares to random
floods of submissions.

A year and half ago, I was reading every "new" post, because I wanted to be
fair, but it's just not feasible right now.

~~~
cx01
A phpBB-like forum would be great. I think you should just go ahead and start
it. I'd use it.

------
greyman
If you don't plan to monetize and brand that forum, I think subreddit is the
way to go.

~~~
SkyMarshal
A Stackexchange site might be too. It seems the main difference b/t the two is
that the Reddit/HN format is oriented submitting links for discussion and
pithy comments, whereas SE is oriented around submitting questions for
specific answers and collective problem-solving. The latter might be more what
the OP is looking for.

~~~
megamark16
I prefer the subreddit approach, mostly because I subscribe to the subreddit
and see new stuff there in addition to all my other reddits, without having to
hit an extra site. Mixergy's community (FoundersMix) is great, but I don't
care so much for the StackOverflow engine for general discussion.

------
SkyMarshal
Start a Stackexchange site with like-minded HN folks?

[http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack-
exchange-...](http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack-exchange-2-0)

And don't forget good ol' Slashdot. Alot of the old trolls moved on the new
hotness social media sites.

~~~
Todd
There's already startups.com (but it doesn't cater to the same HN group). The
problem with SE sites is they are geared more to solving problems and less
about having a dialog.

------
plinkplonk
Interesting that this article got so many upvotes. It seems to have struck a
chord.

Ever since my last two submissions(interesting technical articles which should
appeal to hackers imho) sank without a trace, I have been looking for an
alternative myself. I wonder if (and this maybe blasphemy) whether three
distinct sub-yc s for hacking/startups/other-intellectually-interesting-stuff
may not solve the problem.

------
metamemetics
Simplest solution: add down-voting to submissions as well as comments. Then
people can downvote the super off-topic and repeats.

~~~
robryan
This would solve the problem when a submission will get 20 or 30 upvotes just
because of an interesting title, then most of the next 100 people looking at
it would not agree but it's already got enough votes to sit on the front page
for quiet a few hours.

------
jaytee_clone
How about a mailinglist automatically filters out posts based on relevancy?
Using ardvark-like NLP?

A small niche mailinglist is probably the closest thing to a real online
community, for two reasons:

\- relevant emails always get read by everyone in the mailing list \- people
read emails anyway, so there's less step involved as suppose to going to a
website to read posts.

But a conventional mailinglist is not scalable - some of the lists I'm in get
so many posts everyday that I become de-sensitzed to them.

There's a solution however.

The way to keep the posts relevant is to sub-categorize them much like
subreddit, but that's also work and it's manual. That's where NLP and machine
learning comes in so that the system can learn your preference and only email
you the relevant posts. Of course, you also get an option to receive less-
relevant posts too.

(I should probably make this into a post as suppose to a comment.)

------
mechanician
The lean startup circle Google group is pretty active, with decent SNR.

~~~
icey
To save some googling: <http://groups.google.com/group/lean-startup-circle>

Great find, by the way.

------
Cmccann7
Hackers and Founders & Meetups in Hacker Dojo are great places for physical
meetups in the bay area.

We also launched a product called HelpaStartupOut.com where startups and
founders can post feedback, post educational articles, jobs etc. It's a
simplified classified service for startups.

@jaytee_clone check it out and would love to hear feedback, the project is
still very new chris [at] thestartupdigest.com

------
ehsanul
This may be good for feedback/discussion: <http://answers.onstartups.com/>

------
jaytee_clone
Has anyone tried these?

<http://econnect.entrepreneur.com/>

<http://www.partnerup.com/>

<http://www.startupnation.com/>

<http://cofoundr.com/>

------
avk
What's your favorite & least favorite thing about HN? subreddits? other
startupy sites you follow?

------
kylebragger
forrst.com — I'll give invites to anyone who wants one. Email kyle AT
forrst.com with the subject "Ask HN: HN Alternatives?"

------
christonog
answers.onstartups.com is a pretty good resource, though I sometimes get the
feeling that it's overrun with "idea guys."

------
fezzl
It's called Ask HN.

------
tjoozeylabs
redit

------
brlewis
Try <http://friendfeed.com/> and follow the right people.

------
Jun8
I think it's a big loss for HN when these questions and discussions get posted
on Reddit on another platform. A lot of the people here are young, but I feel
they feel a need to be brainy or wide when posting here. Who says HN should be
buttoned up?

But for people who feel that way, maybe we should have a "HN-unplugged" or
"bleeding edge HN" forum.

