Ask HN: Are there sites that are like HN, but for science, music, history etc? - fhe
======
godelski
I get what the OP is getting at here. Reddit's system is a little different
than HN's. I honestly think the limiting in the ability to downvote helps this
space. And I do find that the community is better here than Reddit. The main
subreddits of those topics tend to have a lot more armchair types. One of the
reasons I love HN is that the majority of users are more informed about the
topics than the average person. There are a lot more thoughtful discussions,
and more advanced topics being discussed.

I mean ask yourself, why are you here in the first place? If you're claiming
is that this is just Reddit, why are you here?

~~~
gorkonsine
>And I do find that the community is better here than Reddit

No, it's really not. It's much worse.

Reddit is not a single community. It's a collection of tens of thousands of
communities (or hundreds even). Each subreddit is really a different
community. Some are awful, others are good. And each one is focused on a
certain topic.

>The main subreddits of those topics tend to have a lot more armchair types.
One of the reasons I love HN is that the majority of users are more informed
about the topics than the average person.

And this place doesn't have armchair types? Sure, for programming topics
you'll find real experts here, but when it comes to some other type of science
or engineering, the users here are know-it-alls who really don't know what
they're talking about. Programmers are infamous for this kind of behavior;
they think that because they know CS in and out that this also makes them an
expert on civil engineering, biology, genetics, etc. People here may be more
informed than the average person, but that's not saying much since the average
person is a drooling idiot. But if you want to find thoughtful discussion on
some engineering topic that isn't computer science or programming, this really
isn't the best place for it. I've seen way too many examples of people making
terrible arguments about things they really don't know about because it's not
their field, and then defending these dumb arguments endlessly.

At least on Reddit you have a better chance of the people in that subreddit
being actual experts in that field, instead of just a bunch of Silicon Valley
programmers who think they're experts on everything.

~~~
shallot_router
How about "the community is better here than Reddit's default subreddits",
then?

Reddit has exactly the same problems as the ones you describe HN has, even in
specialty subreddits populated with experts. People always think expertise in
one field extends to expertise in others.

~~~
gorkonsine
>How about "the community is better here than Reddit's default subreddits",
then?

Well how about, "the community here is better than the community on Twitter"?
That makes about as much sense. Who cares what Reddit's defaults are? How is
that relevant to anything at all? If you want to see discussion of, say,
bluegrass music, you're not going to find it on Reddit's defaults. But there's
probably a subreddit for it.

> shallot_router 25 minutes ago | parent | on: Ask HN: Are there sites that
> are like HN, but for ...

How about "the community is better here than Reddit's default subreddits",
then?

>Reddit has exactly the same problems as the ones you describe HN has, even in
specialty subreddits populated with experts. People always think expertise in
one field extends to expertise in others.

That's not true. Subreddits are narrowly focused on specific topics. Go to a
genetics subreddit and you're not going to see any discussion of civil
engineering, because it's irrelevant and off-topic. HN and similar programmer
forums are different: they have all kinds of science/tech articles thrown
together in one place. So the only time you'll see experts making ill-informed
comments on Reddit is when some side discussion pops up, which just isn't
nearly as frequent as on here where non-programming topics are discussed all
the time as prime topics, or when non-experts (e.g. programmers with a side
interest in that topic) join that group and join discussions.

The fundamental problem with HN (as well as similar sites like Slashdot and
Soylent) is that they're general-interest forums, so they'll always have this
problem. But I contend it's worse here (and those other two sites) precisely
because programmers, due to their autistic nature, have a much worse problem
than people in other fields in thinking they're experts in everything.

~~~
joenot443
>due to their autistic nature, have a much worse problem than people in other
fields in thinking they're experts in everything.

If you're as unimpressed with the community as it would seem, what's keeping
you here at all? At the risk of sounding rude, I'd say your presence wouldn't
be missed too much.

~~~
gorkonsine
You are being rude. It's normal to complain about things without wanting to
give up on them altogether. Do you have any small complaints about your
spouse? Why don't you just get a divorce? Do you have any complaints about
your kids? Why don't you just disown them and give them up to the state?

I'm here because 1) the programming discussions are generally excellent.
(i.e., this site works very well for its audience's primary interest) And 2)
even for the non-programming articles, this is a good place to see such
articles (articles being separate from the HN discussion about them) in one
place, where I might not see them otherwise if I don't have a big enough
interest to join such a group on Reddit (for instance, various history
articles). The discussion can also be interesting, because the people here are
generally intelligent, but you have to take things with a grain of salt
because of the tendency I complained of earlier. However, that's no different
from many other sites like Slashdot.

------
nahumfarchi
I asked a similar question a while back specifically for art related topics
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625854)).
I remember having this feeling that I found some "secret" community when I
first discovered HN, and I think that's essentialy the reason this comes up
every once in a while.

An interesting point is that communities are about people, not technology.
However, it's the technology that sets the tone. Take for example how the
discussion here is text only, which encourages more thoughtful responses (or
at least less memeful). Or the monologues people are sending each other on
whatsapp. Or the <= 140 character quips on twitter. Obviously, just having the
option to upvote and downvote has an impact too.

I think that maybe the consolidation that's happening on the internet is
hurting the formation of these organic communities and is limiting how we
interact through technology. But anyway, to answer your question, did you try
Quora? The format is more of a question and answer site, and the quality
largely depends on whom you're following. For music for example you can try
Ethan Hein and Hans Zimmer.

------
s_dev
Trying not to be a smart ass but aren't you just looking for reddit? i.e. HN
for X?

~~~
yread
I wanted to smartassedly point the user to concrete subreddits that would fit,
but are there any, really?

/r/AskHistorians is great perhaps even better than HN in signal/noise ratio
but it only has "news" on Wednesdays (and that feature is not very popular).

/r/AskScience has a similar problem and /r/Science is getting too many
jokes/memes/regurgitated press releases.

I don't even know where to start for music, /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/ ?

~~~
Tenobrus
For music, the place for discussion OF music (rather than about making music)
is /r/letstalkmusic, which is actually one of the highest quality discussion
subs I know of. It's got a relatively slow but incredibly high quality stream
of discussions, of all aspects of music history, various bands, philosophy and
psychology surrounding music, etc.

For music discovery, /r/listentothis is alright (although it has declined
greatly since becoming a default). /r/listentous is sometimes much better and
sometimes much worse, by the nature of the sub (elected recommenders). The
real best places for discovery are the genre-specific subs however, i.e.
/r/metal, /r/futurebeats, etc.

------
type0
If you're after niche kind of forums I would suggest these:

physics -

[https://www.physicsforums.com/](https://www.physicsforums.com/)

photography gear -

[https://www.dpreview.com/forums/](https://www.dpreview.com/forums/)

------
oyeanuj
We are building something like that, for all the fields out there. We've built
an interest graph that allows for it to the targeting to be hyper-relevant
that really gets at exactly what you are interested in (so what
era/region/aspect of history rather than just 'history').

We are launching our beta in the next couple of months, but until then you can
sign up on [http://shuffle.do](http://shuffle.do) to stay tuned. Happy to
answer any questions.

~~~
godelski
How are you keeping the community focused? And how are you dealing with
armchair types? I don't expect you to ever get rid of them, and they can be
useful, but is there a way to keep the real experts higher priority?

~~~
oyeanuj
Good questions! Highly simplified but when you come in, we ask you a few
specifically-designed questions about what you are interested in, which helps
us drill down into very specific interests. Through those questions, we can
also recognize folks for whom that field/interest is a less serious pursuit.

And then when you post, you select the topic/community and our algorithm does
the targeting/distribution accordingly. This keeps your feed hyper-relevant as
the network grows.

We've studied different network and community dynamics, and taken them into
account when designing Shuffle as our aim is to become the hub for all of the
fields out there.

~~~
godelski
Well I signed up, I'll be interested to give it a try.

------
evex
[https://barnacl.es](https://barnacl.es): News for bootstrappers, not VC
hackers

------
DKnoll
If you're interested in discussion on those topics the relevant Stack Exchange
site would probably be a good place.

~~~
klez
I wouldn't second this suggestion. Stackexchange sites are for Q&A, not for
discussion about a topic.

~~~
DKnoll
We're having a discussion in response to a question right now. It is not for
general discussion (except in chat), you're right.

------
kfk
Well, I don't know anything of the quality of hn, but if you are interested in
analytics we could kick off one.

------
kirarpit
yup, it's called Reddit

