
Non-Hacker News - mattmaroon
In order to help alleviate the perceived problem of off-topic posts here, I've created a slinkset at http://nonhackernews.com . (And yes, I realize this post is contributing to the problem, but I promise it will be the only one.)<p>Despite the name being the opposite of this site's you are all very welcome there. My goal is to bring the same level of discourse that this site has to general interest topics. It's a lofty goal I realize, but I think it's possible.<p>Topics like economics, health, etc. is what it is designed for. The stuff that a lot of people seem to enjoy here, but a lot of other people seem to want to be off-topic.<p>This is totally a public service on my part, and I'm not putting up ads or trying to capitalize on it in any way. And please don't take this as an attempt at some sort of great schism of the audience here, it's not. I'll still surf this site no matter how popular NHN gets. I'm only trying to make another site that I (and judging by the votes many "off-topic" posts get here, many of you) like to read.<p>I'm also looking for a few more people to be moderators (I've already got 3 other than myself) since I don't have a large amount of time to put into it. The goal is to keep the the discourse intelligent, civil, and balanced, and without trolls, press releases, spam, and pictures of kittens. I have a feeling that a little moderation will go a long way toward that.
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nickb
I have a biz/financial news site that used to be for my personal use but
everyone's welcome to sign up and use it. It's running Arc + HN forum soft.
It's still heavily beta as I use it as a testing ground for some AI/NLP stuff
that I'm writing in Arc.

I dig out a ton of great links but only a fraction are god for HN, hence a new
site for biz & finance. In my past life I used to work in finance so I'm still
attached to that field. I am also trying to round off some of my business
knowledge as well and there's really no good business sites out there that
have stuff that's past the 'news' category.

Enjoy: <http://www.newmogul.com/>

~~~
j2d2
I am patiently waiting for a network to grow here. So far it's mainly nickb
and I've had a post.

I don't think there is an equivalent to this, but the name might be a turn off
for some. There are many great minds not totally interested in turning into a
mogul. They might see themselves as already being moguls and thus think this
site is a place for n00bs.

~~~
nickb
Agreed. It's a shitty name but I had the domain for a while and it was
supposed to be used for something else. When I started looking for a domain to
bring the site up, I couldn't find anything so I ended up using this. Oh well.

~~~
j2d2
I think bear.com should be free soon. Maybe lehman.com.

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kcy
Two suggestions - totally personal, so curious what other's think: 1) get rid
of the front page dominating "welcome", I think it's unnecessary and annoying
- people will click on the link and read more if they want to.

2) make the interface _exactly_ like hacker news. For instance I think the
bold titles is a bit distracting, esp after navigating over from hn.

3) one of my favorite features of hn is that I can often just type "n" into my
browser address bar and the browser autocompletes to news.ycombinator.com.
This is particularly useful on my mobile. Would be cool if the name of non-hn
had some similar sort of name that leveraged autocomplete.

~~~
newt0311
Firefox has a (to my knowledge -- undocumented) bookmark keyword feature which
allows assigning keywords to bookmarks. These keywords can then be typed into
the location bar and firefox with automatically load the bookmark. The keyword
input box only pops up when you right-click on the bookmark and go to
properties. This along with the search keywords probably account for ~40% of
my speed when surfing. (tabs account for a lot of the remaining 60%).

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I assigned the letter 'b' to my corporate bugzilla. Now my coworkers wonder
why I seem almost psychic when it comes to remembering the details of a given
bug.... typing 'b 17084' is a fantastic way to pull up bug 17084. I've got
shortcuts for wikipedia and google as well.

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rrf
The creation of a non-hacker news site seems a bit knee-jerk. Would it not
have been better to have waited a few days to see how the recent debate has
affected the quality of submissions?

~~~
mattmaroon
The recent debate is just one out of a number of posts/comments that have been
ongoing for months. (I actually like the quality of submissions here.)

~~~
rrf
Agreed - on both points. I guess I took the removal of Prakash's submission
from the front page to mean: point taken, let's move on.

~~~
mattmaroon
I actually almost did this a month ago, but for whatever reason it slipped my
mind. That just kind of reminded me.

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hs
I don't mind about off-topic posts since what i'm looking for mostly is short,
witty / insightful comments

for example, pg may not comment on obviously "hacker" stuff like php thread,
but he might on 'non-hacker' posts like healthy food, stock market, etc

that's why i avoid (skimming) posts with php, python, ruby, windows, linux,
gnu, oss, fsf, mac, osx, apple since the probability that i get great comments
is approaching zero [over time]

Yes, there's a "comments" link up there, but i still have to manually search

My suggestion is that hn to have an alert icon where the list of my favorite
"thought leaders" comment on the post - think about gmail's star

so if a post has a star next to it, then maybe pg and some thought leaders
comment on it ... that post could be interesting

"always take the harder path" ... commenting is harder than upvoting

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rgrieselhuber
I think it's a cool idea. Hackers tend (IMO) to take a gestalt view on the
world which makes them naturally interested in much more than just programming
and startups. If HN isn't the place to satisfy those needs, I don't mind
seeing someone else give it a go.

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rantfoil
Slinkset rocks! This is a perfect application of a totally amazing piece of
software.

~~~
mattmaroon
I am most impressed at how easy it is to set up. I'm having some problem with
the domain names, but it might by my fault or dynadot's.

~~~
rantfoil
Wait 24 hours and it should be all kosher. DNS is always a PITA.

~~~
mattmaroon
It wasn't DNS, since I'm using the registrar's and just doing a CNAME entry,
so I never changed nameservers. It actually had something to do with a cookie
apparently. Now it all seems to be working fine.

There was something about the redirect looping. I have so little clue about
that stuff. Either way though, it's not a slinkset problem.

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Alex3917
According the FAQ, anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity is on
topic. Does this mean that on-topic for nonhackernews is anything that does
not gratify one's intellectual curiosity?

~~~
mattmaroon
I meant off-topic in the way that most people who claim things are off-topic
mean it, hence the quotes.

~~~
Alex3917
I was half joking, I actually did read the FAQ. Personally I would go the
other way. I would rather keep the intellectually gratifying articles from the
NYT magazine, salon, TED, the new yorker, marc cuban's blog, edge.org, etc.
and get rid of the esoteric programming articles and cliche business advice.
To me what makes hacker news boring is all the front page articles about
erlang libraries and cloud computing.

~~~
raganwald
_I would rather keep the intellectually gratifying articles from the NYT
magazine, salon, TED, the new yorker, marc cuban's blog, edge.org, etc. and
get rid of the esoteric programming articles and cliche business advice. To me
what makes hacker news boring is all the front page articles about erlang
libraries and cloud computing._

This is the direction the HN front page seems to be heading. Maybe you have a
lot of kindred spirits!

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TFrancis
I appreciate the effort you've expended to setup a new news site but, I'm
unlikely to ever venture there. If in fact, this act betters Hacker News, I'm
even less likely to venture there.

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netcan
Would all of this "off-topic" go away if there was a reddit like check box for
topics in the settings, HN & NHN that users could turn on/off. That way, a
user can just turn off all NHN.

Sealing these two off with two different sites seems a bit much. Are strictly
HN people so offended by NHN that they want it of there GD site altogether.

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edw519
not nonhacker news

(I've been waiting 580 days to say that.)

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alaskamiller
Reddit?

~~~
mattmaroon
But with the very key addition of moderation.

~~~
alaskamiller
I actually wish someone just throw up a vbulletin install for all the off-
topic discussions. That's really what people want. All these Ask YC/HN stuff,
people wanting profiles or avatars, etc.

~~~
mdolon
done... <http://www.thehackerforum.com/>

~~~
andreyf
I actually wish someone would create an OS as nice and user friendly as OSX,
with the market share of Microsoft, and completely open source.

Also, that I had a pony.

~~~
mdolon
done: <http://www.ubuntu.com/> (ok not really)

and done: <http://www.hasbro.com/mylittlepony/>

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yters
Pretty smart, I think this effectively solves the problem. Now, you get the HN
readership without the risk of attracting people who just want to knee jerk
vote and promote their pet causes.

I also volunteer for moderating.

~~~
yters
Would it work to make NHN a superset of HN? Then people going to NHN can still
participate in HN easily. Otherwise, you might create a migration.

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raheemm
I like the mix of hacker and non-hacker stuff on HN. I would hate to see it
become all technical - I mean, we do tech all day long, its nice to venture
out and read what else is going on.

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kyro
I think it's a good idea. It'd be cool to see the same people here express
their views, share ideas, etc. on topics other than programming/business.

I have time to moderate. My email is in my profile.

~~~
mattmaroon
If you sign up an account there I'll upgrade it.

~~~
kyro
I'm in.

Btw, are you raising any capital?

~~~
mattmaroon
Ha, not for that site. It's just for fun. Slinkset may be though, I don't
know. And if we become a burden on them, I might toss up a donation jar and/or
some unobtrusive ads to cover their expenses.

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bootload
_"... I've created a slinkset ..."_

Tried it but having trouble putting a non-hackernews article. Also noted if
you have a slinkset login, you should be able to login straight away.

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gills
Thank you. I have found myself in an odd spot, enjoying the economic and
political discussion but trying not to lower the S/N by fueling the fire with
submissions.

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BrandonM
Great! Now when someone feels that a submission here is not Hacker News, they
can submit it to nonhackernews and reply to the submission here with the link.

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lunatech
My attempt at taming HN
<[http://pipes.yahoo.com/lunatech/hackernews>](http://pipes.yahoo.com/lunatech/hackernews>);

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aj
Checking it out.. But why are the contents of the welcome post on the front
page itself?

Ps. I can be a moderator if you still need another one. Id: Anant

~~~
mattmaroon
Not sure. I thought it would put the link there and then the text once you
clicked it, but that's how it behaved.

At least it should be gone soon.

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boredguy8
"Not" doesn't have much appeal. Good luck, though!

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mk
I would be willing to be a moderator.

~~~
mattmaroon
Done. Thanks :)

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mk
emkay is my non-hacker news account.

~~~
mattmaroon
I noticed. It's now a mod.

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ajkirwin
Now this is what I was hoping for!

 _registers_

