
Ask HN: What's so special about HN? Why do you hang out here? - nonotmeplease
Just curious... why not somewhere else? It&#x27;s the only community with smart people I know. Are there any others?
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AnimalMuppet
Mostly-polite interaction on the content of ideas rather than personal
attacks.

High signal-to-noise ratio.

A fair number of thought-provoking posts from a lot of different angles.

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nonotmeplease
Why is so hard to build a similar community somewhere else? (I don't plan to
but...) Suppose I wanted to build a community like HN, how do I proceed?

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yen223
It's the old chicken-and-egg problem: you build a community by attracting new
users, but new users will join only if there's already a good community. It's
hard to get a community started.

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stephenr
There is also [https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs), and I like their
approach more (it's not inherently related to venture capital backed startups,
and its much more transparent with the community (i.e. the concept of
effectively hiding unpopular opinions does not exist there)

Unfortunately, it's also nowhere near as active - possibly because it works on
invites and its often hard to find someone who will invite others.

Having said that, if anyone wants an invite, please reply here (or see my
profile to email me, please include your HN username if you do that) and I'll
shoot you an invite.

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dvdcxn
Would love an invite if you still have any, seems like a nice place to spend
my lunch hour.

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S4M
I can send you one if you email me (my email is in my profile).

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usermac
Thank you. Got the invite and signed up. ^_^

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saywahat
Simple ui. No crap to cut through.

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mod
Comments, that's 95% of why I'm here.

I could find the same stories elsewhere with no (or worse) discussion.

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mwhuang2
It's like a newspaper for techies. The community is also polite and
intellectual, and I feel more comfortable here than on other sites.

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Nicholas_C
Good discussion. I don't know anything about a many posts here (not a
programmer by trade, and barely a hobbyist) and I don't work in startups. But
there are a lot of interesting things that are posted here and the intelligent
discussion keeps me coming back.

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frou_dh
Low-effort 'humour' comments get downvoted here! Compare to much of reddit,
which is to wade through hoards of comedy-slugs attempting to riff off each
other.

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dvdcxn
To be fair I really enjoy reddit's focus on irreverence even if the quality of
said irreverence has dropped on the more popular subs in recent years.

