

Academic Recess: The Hacker News For Education - namank
http://recess.ribbot.com/

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deveac
Don't define your community identity by referencing another community so
literally...especially one your users probably aren't familiar with at all in
the aggregate. It fails on two level as your users you are trying to message
don't even get the point of reference.

It's great to be inspired, but if you truly want to nurture a community with
its own identity, then this is probably hurting rather than helping. Focus on
them, 100%.

Hubski is a good example of a site that is obviously inspired by HN (it is
also coded in Arc, and started as a port), but went off and did its own thing
from a community, mechanic, and feature point of view.

Even in your 'How it works' page you instruct users to post and go on about HN
again:

 _> We are hoping that you take the steps to not only read and vote the posts,
but also to submit and comment on posts. One of the reasons Hacker News is
such a popular and useful site is how the users interact with each other._

It just sort of comes across as commanding your users to post so you can be
like HN. That's not compelling. The focus should be on building a place your
users _want_ to use, -whatever that takes. What's in it for them?

I hope none of this comes across as harsh. Take the focus of HN and point it
at your community with the same passion and obvious admiration, and I think
you'll be better rewarded. What does a link aggregator that educators want to
use look like? What features does it have? What services does it tie into?
Does the command to submit "education related articles" make it a poor fit for
what educators want (would a broader directive to simply post on any topic
that satisfies intellectual curiosity as HN does be a better fit)?

Stuff like that.

Anyway, good luck namank!

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namank
Cheers but I didn't make this.

That said, I actually agree with creators. The initial member behaviour will
set the tone for the rest of the community. If they can use HN to give seed
members an idea of the intent, they can build momentum.

Then they can take off the HN references at about ~20 active members..

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deveac
Ah, sorry, I misunderstood and thought you were introducing it :)

I still think that the messaging to potential users is really confusing,
especially at the most critical point where you are just beginning to try and
gain adoption, but I guess I could see it as a strategy of sorts. Didn't quite
come across to me as an overt strategy for increasing engagement and
instructing community norms, but I could easily be wrong.

~~~
namank
No worries, those were some really good points. Things that I would definitely
consider if this were my project.

As for explicit strategy, my guess is as good as yours!

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bennyg
Cool idea, but I wouldn't plan to have it be branded long-term as "The Hacker
News for Education." I could imagine a very small subset of educators know
what HN is, and to be honest, I always thought of "hacking" in the
stereotypical Hollywood way. Until I came to Hacker News and read a few pg
essays did I understand the colloquialism here. I did/do "hack" things, but I
never thought about it like that - so I imagine educators might freak with the
stereotypical definition being top of mind.

~~~
japhyr
I'd like to see it called Educator News. I'd like it as close of a clone to HN
as possible. This name would communicate clearly what it is, while maintaining
a connection to HN for those of us with feet in both communities.

~~~
deveac
Educator News is a great name imho. Simple and _completely_ on message.

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japhyr
I love this, but I can't get registered. Is it working for anyone else?

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tokenadult
I too have not been able to sign in. I attempted to open a user account, got
an error message, and have seen no further follow-up yet.

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saraid216
I refreshed and appear to be logged in, but when I click on "My Profile", I
get tossed to an error page on /verifications. I'm guessing there's an email
server screaming in pain somewhere.

~~~
HedgeMage
same problem here

