

Best of Hacker News - A curated list of the highest ranked articles in March'13 - jesscold
https://www.dotdotdot.me/Dan-Radliff/Best-of-Hacker-News-in-March-2013

======
ruswick
By definition, a list that is simply composed of the top rated articles cannot
be "curated." Curation implies some sort of holistic selection and specialized
organization, and is almost an art unto itself. Simply selecting the set of
articles with the highest ratings does not constitute curation.

It bemuses me as to why internet has seen fit to abuse this word to such as
point as to make it trite and totally vacuous. At this point, using it is more
likely to grate users and discredit the product.

~~~
eclw
I just spent a few days at the London Book Fair - my headline from that would
be 'Publishers are terrified of losing role of curators of the written word,
in a world where anyone can publish'.

What publishers currently seem to be missing is that in a world where the
barriers to publication are reducing to zero, good curating is going to be the
commodity that I, as a consumer, will value most highly. By good, I mean
'feels correct to me.'

The problem is volume. First person to discover a means to curate at high
volumes is king.

tldr - you are spot on - be good at high volume curating and there is your
fortune.

~~~
r00fus
> First person to discover a means to curate at high volumes is king.

Surely you are talking about Google? After all, what is search but massive-
scale curation?

~~~
eclw
It occurred to me that I'd ended up somewhere obvious as I hit reply - but two
days in a strip-lit barn in Earls Court can do that.

But to be fair, in book publishing the problem is deeper than web search - you
need to be a better curator because the consumer investment is bigger.

Hitting a search link is close to free for the consumer, but accepting a book
recommendation is relatively expensive, both in time spent sampling and pounds
sterling. So good curating has greater value.

I'm going to be less happy if the third book on the recommendation list is the
one that hits the spot if I've had to purchase and start to read
recommendations one and two.

------
dangoldin
If people are interested in this I hacked together a quick site that shows the
top HN submissions over the past 24 hours: <http://yahnr.com/>

Motivation was to be able to catch up on items I may have missed.

------
carlgross
Nice list

