

Ask HN:  Would anyone be interested in a Hacker News wiki? - j_baker

I just saw this comment by pg:  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1329415<p>I can understand pg's point of view on this.  On the other hand though, I honestly wasn't aware of searchyc until I saw that thread.  It seems to me that if pg won't make an official place to post links to things like that, there should be an <i>un</i>official place.<p>On the other hand, I can't really think of much else to put there other than a couple of iPhone apps and the link to searchyc.  So is there enough content out there to justify a wiki?
======
TrevorBurnham
I'd love to see a wiki aimed at HN newcomers, with a page on frequent topics
and a list of the most relevant threads on that topic. Of course, in order for
such a resource to really be useful, newcomers would have to be made aware of
it. That is, it would have to become "official" and be linked to prominently
from HN.

~~~
derefr
> I'd love to see a wiki aimed at HN newcomers, with a page on frequent topics
> and a list of the most relevant threads on that topic.

I had an idea a while ago, that this could be the _primary_ interface for a
social news site: instead of having new posts get voted on individually and
appear without context, which then has to be added in the comments, you'd have
"news threads" on certain topics (e.g. "the iPad" would be _one thread_.).
You'd post an article to a thread (different from posting a comment—it would
appear at the top with all the other articles under the thread's discussion)
and it would get voted on, only allowed to "come under discussion" of the
thread once it passed a certain threshold.

* The front page of the site would be threads sorted by aggregate score of their article posts, weighted by the time of their most recent contributed article (so posting a good link would bump the thread.)

* Articles could be submitted individually (into the "uncategorized" thread, I suppose) and then moved into threads by moderation (which would give moderators an opportunity to create a new thread when a discussion doesn't already have a place—a possible insertion point for spam otherwise.)

* Every thread comment would be in reply to _both_ a user (with root-level comments being "to" the submitter) _and_ an article within the thread. Comments would still be threaded, so someone could add a new article to "cite" their comment upon as evidence for/against someone else's comment on a previous article in the thread. Comments in cite of articles that hadn't passed the voting threshold would be greyed out.

* "Spam posts" and "advertisements" would simply be threads, able to rise to the top if something in them happens to merit it.

* A "best of" post is simply a post of one of the thread's comments as an article to the thread, and ties that comment's karma score to the thread's aggregate score (allowing threads that have brilliant discussion, but bad articles/links, to rise.)

Anyone want to steal/implement this?

------
leftnode
Sure, I'd love to see all of the companies that YC has funded, what they're
doing now, if they folded, were acquired, or more in depth details than what
Crunchbase gives about them.

~~~
ErrantX
I started this off: <http://www.startupwiki.co.uk/investor/ycombinator>

Never really took off though.

~~~
jacquesm
Cool man, I never even realized you had that!

Now, maybe if we asked pg to put a link... (oh, well never mind, it was only a
joke).

But yes, that's a great thing to have around, one thing that springs to mind
right away is a more expansive guide for newbies that we can point to when
people are new, confused or both.

~~~
ErrantX
> Cool man, I never even realized you had that!

Heh :) I posted it once or twice - it got a rash of several additions and then
quietened down, a bit too much for me to manually add in all the historical
data sadly...

I'll happily add pages and bits and pieces if it's helpful (in a more HN
specific way)... fire away with any suggestions.

~~~
jacquesm
\- newbie guide

\- gems section (great stuff, not unlike 'bestcomments', but plenty of really
great stuff never gets the votes it deserves) that will be a great resource in
and of itself

\- hints and tips

\- a set of links to articles about YC start-ups, integrated on the page about
that start-up

~~~
ErrantX
Ok, stay tuned :) (might take a day or so to get to it)

~~~
ig1
Feel free to grab the list of ycombinator start-ups from my blog
([http://blog.awesomezombie.com/2009/12/analyzing-y-
combinator...](http://blog.awesomezombie.com/2009/12/analyzing-y-
combinator.html)) if it'll help.

------
JayNeely
On a related note, <http://ircstartups.pbworks.com/> serves the #startups
channel, which is really the unofficial HN IRC channel on Freenode.

------
DTrejo
There's also this:
<http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>

