
An HN Alternative for Long-form Content - colbyaley
http://thelist.io/
======
ruswick
Am I the only one who despises the gamification and absurd elitism present in
this product? I've neven been fond of exclusivity, and am of the opinion that
good content ecosystems are resilient and will surface superior content
regardless of the number of people present. The "tragedy of the commons"
argument is a total straw man, and if anything is erroneous. HN thrives
_because_ of the volume of people and diversity of content.

Good content is good content, irrespective of who discovered it or how much
notoriety they have. It's not the prerogative of the site to make arbitrary
decisions about who ought to be able engage in the discussion or who ought to
be able to submit content. Such draconian, "karma"-based restriction will
likely preclude the submission of a lot of great stuff and will make it more
difficult for newcomers to engage with the site.

HN is pretty damn good at surfacing interesting content. Restricting
submissions and users in an arbitrary manner is not the way to improve news
aggregation.

~~~
1123581321
The major problem is the owners are making it invite only, but the owners are
not interesting and accomplished enough to be the top of the pyramid of a
successful site (they can't easily invite up.) They see HN's dilution as the
problem; but diluting from the high water line set by PG st al leaves HN
higher than TheList with no dilution.

~~~
namelesstrash02
I have an honest question. Do you really feel this way about "pg et al"? I'm
asking because these kinds of comments about "pg et al" is really not helping
anyone at HN or elsewhere defend against accusations of elitism and
exclusionary sentiment.

~~~
1123581321
Yes, I think that he is a good programmer who thinks and writes well about
both the technical and business aspects of software development. And the et al
are like him to varying degrees.

It is necessary for a great discussion site to be founded by an elite person
or by elite people, because the core of the site needs to be made of people
who both have quality thoughts and express them well. For whatever reason that
isn't a commonly found trait, so those who possess it are elite.

That said, it is not necessary for founders of discussion sites to _pursue_
exclusion, and as we have seen on Hacker News, a variety of quality new
members are attracted here by the 'elites' and also become good participants.
Many, in my opinion, surpass some of the 'et al' in member quality.

I do think some mediocre members come along with, but I see them developed
into better members over time, and this gives the community practice
assimilating and improving mediocrity. By contrast, TheList will have very
little practice spreading its culture so it will be a brittle, barely fruitful
community.

So, a community with elite core members can be open and fair to new members
while making them into better members and even has the possibility to improve
the community over time. A community with less than elite members that
practices elitism and exclusion does not do as well even relative to its
initial position.

~~~
namelesstrash03
I can get on board with a lot of the philosophy in your statements about
refining or distilling "member quality". However, it needs to be said that
there is a ruler-on-the-knuckles system of punishing opinions that dissent
against those of this so-called "elite core" comprising HN, regardless of the
correctness or quality of the dissent. And I think it happens with enough
frequency and consistency that it has made the "elite core" into an "elitist
exclusion zone" that ends up smoothing off the rough granularity of the kind
of qualities that make someone an "elite" person. The kind of qualities that
HN should be encouraging and helping to refine, if improving themselves and
the community is indeed their goal.

Also, I think it's critical to be aware of correlation versus causation in
situations like this. What is causing the "refinement of elite persons" that
supposedly turns mediocre contributors into better ones on HN? We can say that
people who read HN more than once a week will likely have exposure to
something that helps them learn and grow, but that is not due to the nature of
the other "elite" people on HN. It's due to the _nature of the information
presented_ on HN. I become a better programmer because I am exposed to quality
information on HN, not because some "elite" member of HN is doing anything to
make me a better programmer. This is a very important distinction, because
more often than not, it seems that the "elite core" of HN is under the
impression that they are improving mediocre contributors (and claiming
victory) when in fact it is the content doing the improving.

There is a very interesting link here on HN called "the elves are leaving
middle earth -- the soda is no longer free" (or similar) which describes the
kind of "scale problem" HN is having. The management of HN itself is
undergoing a very similar transition, from one of encouraging the hacker
mindset to... something else.

Most importantly, I have often found that the "elite core" is sanding away the
sort of rebellious je ne sais qois that makes a person "elite" -- or a
"hacker". Please reference my favorite essay of pg's about "the word hacker".
There is visible decay and erosion of the principles expressed in that essay
in the daily happenings of HN. I have for years thrown that essay around as a
cure-all explanation of why I think the way I do, and it seems an opus of
irony that the "elite core" of HN would do well to read it and take stock. You
should wonder why a "hacker" like myself is burning through throwaway accounts
and getting hellbanned for what amounts to the expression of dissenting
opinion. As pg said so eloquently so many years ago -- indeed, a different pg
altogether -- a hacker "can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance,
as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm".

My senses are telling me to avoid HN and its "elite core", to the point that I
need to weigh the benefits of staying versus the benefits of never coming
back. And that is not a good sign for HN.

~~~
1123581321
Good thoughts. I agree that the content is primary; however, I count some
comments here among the best content and those are written by community
members to other community members.

I also agree that PG is not always making the best choices and deputizations
in his struggle to maintain the quality of the community. I understand that
both decisions to pursue openness and exclusion in a large community will
drive away some quality members, but the exclusionary tactics (banning the
wrong kind of people) upset people philosophically opposed to it in addition
to causing the atrophy found in exclusionary policies as I said earlier.

I hope that you'll stick around and contribute some great content, but if you
don't, please influence TheList or whichever community you prefer to embody
that anti-totalitarian hacker mindset and thus to really compete with HN. We
will all benefit from that.

------
AlexDanger
I'm getting weird font rendering on this site:

<https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1325900/Capture1.PNG>

Windows 8 x64, Chrome 26.0.1410.64 m.

~~~
JacksonGariety
Can you clear cache and try now? Thanks.

~~~
AlexDanger
Still no good.

Are you doing some kind of scaling? It looks much better when I scale to 110%
(Chrome and IE), but at the default 100% I get the artifacts. Tried a few
different zoom settings, some are ok, some are not.

On the HN site I can zoom to any size and the font renders correctly .

~~~
JacksonGariety
I wish I had a Windows computer to test with. I'd play around with font size
in the inspector until I got it rendering correctly. If you can give me a font
size that renders correctly I'll change it.

~~~
allannienhuis
<https://github.com/xdissent/ievms>

super easy way to get windows vms installed on virtual box. Installs as many
versions of IE as you want/need, preconfigured on clean vms. The vms are
provided by microsoft: <http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools>

------
mtowle
You may want to reconsider the "top 15" thing, and even the pages of content
thing, if you're trying to fill the longform niche. I don't know what
direction you'd necessarily want to go in, but I do know that the form factor
you're using right now is the same one that gave rise to the problem you're
trying to solve.

~~~
JacksonGariety
I'm co-creator of the site. What form factor would you recommend?

~~~
mtowle
Like I said, I don't necessarily know. I'll tell you what, I'm going to go
think about it for an hour and come back.

For now, stating the problem correctly will have to suffice: What form factor
rewards Depth over Sensationalism? The latter should be understood both in the
journalistic sense and in the "wow, that's a cool animated gif" sense. NB: if
there's a universal law of content aggregators, it's that the less time it
takes to absorb content, the higher its upvote ceiling and the more that
category dominates. E.g., on Reddit, imgur > gifs > youtube > political
headlines > short articles > your niche. Call me crazy, but you may seriously
want to consider doing away with votes, headlines, even the "next" button. I
really don't know. Brb in an hour or so.

~~~
JacksonGariety
Thanks for your feedback. All saved in the company notes.

~~~
rubinelli
How about working with discrete batches? Update the first page only twice a
day. I think this would be enough to drastically changed the dynamics.

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quasque
Nice, though I seem to have a font-rendering issue on the site, as they appear
rather aliased: <http://i.imgur.com/173YQ1Z.png> (Windows 7, Chrome 27)

~~~
vxNsr
Same only Windows 8, Chrome 26

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ArekDymalski
I like the karma-tax on posting. Does it also apply to comments?

~~~
colbyaley
It does not, actually. We encourage discussion.

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ArekDymalski
If the site is aimed at high quality content I'd suggest that the submit page
should not be the first thing that the user sees after creating the account. I
understand that right now you need users&submissions but in the future it
might be beneficial if users will be required to learn a bit about the
community (read X posts, take part in Y discussions etc.) before submitting
stuff.

------
hkmurakami
As a faithful reader of longform.org's business section, I am drooling all
over this!! Looking forward to being a reader and submitter! :)

------
feniv
It looks pretty nice! I would suggest that you get rid of the list numbering.
It adds little value to the front page (knowing the exact rank of a post isn't
very useful) and makes the points a little more confusing.

~~~
dkuntz2
But... HN has those...

~~~
feniv
The layout makes all of the difference. The numbers aren't right next to each
other on hackernews, so there's enough visual difference between the two.

~~~
dkuntz2
The numbers weren't right next to them on the list before (they're now gone).
The difference is that the point total is under the news item on HN, where the
list put it next to it.

There was more space between the numbers on the list than on HN. HN is only
separated by the up arrow.

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photorized
I would make the list numbers more subtle (gray), or would remove them
altogether.

Currently, the two numbers so close together (same size/font) look weird:

<http://i.imgur.com/nvr6cCC.png>

------
iancarroll
If anyone wants an invite, I'd be happy to give one out if you actually
deserve it. You can submit an application on the page, but if you want to send
details I'm at ian{dot}carroll{at}snapstudiodesign{dot}com

~~~
1123581321
What is your criteria?

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thekingshorses
If you remove underline, and increase font-size to 21 px for titles, it will
look lot better on windows.

<http://i.imgur.com/7ZKA7gh.png>

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eksith
I'm curious as to what software they're using. Might be interesting to look at
the code for that.

~~~
_mhr_
It says on the site that they're using Ruby and Rails on the about page.

~~~
eksith
Yes, but the Github repo seems to return 404 :

<https://github.com/jacksonGariety/The-List>

~~~
iancarroll
Yep, there's a new GitHub repo. Let me pull it up for you.
<https://github.com/Little-Big-Co/The-List> I'll setup a pull request to
change the URL.

~~~
eksith
Thanks!

I like this approach to karma as well, but I wish the number were hidden
altogether and instead had an "excellent", "good", "neutral" or "bad" model
for community standing. This can prevent heard mentality for up/down voting.

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sidcool
A pretty cool concept. I won't call it an HN alternative though. It's more of
HN augmentation.

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thoughtcriminal
I'd submit this again. This is too cool.

~~~
colbyaley
Thanks!

------
colbyaley
So it appears as if the HN gods have pushed us down to the bottom. Sadface

