
Lobsters - relation
https://lobste.rs/
======
olalonde
No about page, no way to register, no mention of Yehuda Katz...

edit: Apparently, the site was launched by Joshua Stein (after getting
hellbanned from HN), not Yehuda Katz.
[https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...](https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news/)

~~~
why-el
Yehuda is one of the active users: <https://lobste.rs/u/wycats>

Update: The site is also open source: <https://github.com/jcs/lobsters>

Last shameless update: Would love an invite. Email in my profile.

~~~
anthonyb
There's also some more information here:
<https://lobste.rs/s/bkeYe9/about_lobsters>

~~~
jpdoctor
Thanks for that link. FTL: _Hacker News is operated by a company, Y
Combinator, which has a significant financial incentive to censor or promote
the links and discussion posted on the site that relate to Y Combinator-funded
startups (or competitors of them)._

Haven't seen much discussion about this HN flaw. Interesting...

~~~
slurgfest
It is brought up constantly but it is not the kind of discussion which seems
to be much approved of. (In the interest of disclosure, I don't even care)

~~~
pbiggar
As a YC founder, whose YC startup got torn apart on HN, I find no truth to
this statement.

~~~
slurgfest
You don't think it is brought up or you do think that it is approved of?
(edit: I never indicated any level of agreement with YC using HN to unfairly
promote YC companies, so if you are responding to that then maybe you meant to
respond to my parent)

~~~
pbiggar
I did in fact intend to respond to the parent. Apologies.

------
jasonkester
Nice. Notice how it so neatly slices off exactly one demographic from here and
transplants it over there, without anything that would distract them. It's
focussed just on one topic: Software development stuff for Software
Developers.

There are four main camps here at HN:

\- "Software Entrepreneurs", building Big Important Startups or quaint little
"lifestyle businesses" that let them drive their cute little "italian
supercars" around their quaint little midwestern town.

\- "Computer Programmers", talking about languages, deployment strategies,
open source stuff and how to configure their dotfiles to automatically convert
tabs to spaces.

\- "Tech Gossip Afficianodos", excited about what Techcrunch has to say about
who got funded, and taking sides in fights between giant corporations.

\- And the guy who just wants to point out that pirating movies off the
internet is technically just "copyright infringement" and therefore not bad at
all (and really HBO's fault anyway.)

These guys grabbed just their team, and now they're free to talk shop without
any of the myriad distractions they'd get trying to do it here.

It's a little selfish to note that I actually see this as a good thing for a
slightly different reason: If Camp 2 leaves, that's more HackerNews for those
of us in Camp 1, which is the reason I'm here. We'll still have to flag stuff
from the other two distracting groups, but it just might make this place a
little nicer as well. Everybody wins.

~~~
Iv
What amazes me is that in 2012 we still haven't found a decent auto-moderation
tagging system that would allow these demographics to emerge naturally and we
have to hope for someone to leave.

I just want 2 moderation buttons : "insighful" (make this contribution more
visible) and "relevant to my interests" (make the things this user tags as
insightful or relevant more visible to me. May include a partial transitivity
of the "relevant to my interests" operator)

Does such a system exist? Is it flawed.

~~~
manmal
It's tempting to install such a system, but it would establish a strong
tunnelblick for users. Also, what if I change my interests (interest reset
button?)?

I could imagine an opt-out system, like "funding stories don't interest me at
all", but then, Facebook's IPO would fall into that category and I followed it
with interest.

~~~
notyourwork
I would assume you could tune or adjust your interests over time, similar to
any other user specific preferences.

To your second point it is merely a matter or design choice. Does "funding
stories as a whole" trump your more specific interest of Facebook IPO or does
your specific interest in Facebook's IPO trump your desire to opt out of the
funding stories as a whole.

The problem I see is making such a system intuitive to your user base and
clear. It seems the more complex the system is the more complex the user
preferences become.

------
subsection1h
I want a site for discussing software development news that has the equivalent
of a kill file. There are a handful of prolific users at Hacker News who post
multiple low-quality messages every day. I avoid Hacker News because of users
such as these.

I honestly believe that at least a few of these users are secretly employed by
the companies that they promote and defend daily. I don't know if they're paid
to post here or that they're simply blind loyalists. Either way, they deserve
to be plonked.

Below are two examples (posted by a prolific user) of the type of messages I
would like to see less of, which could be filtered by a kill file feature:

"HN is going to hell because its overrun with people who practice an ideology
of socialism -- pro-google because its "Free" and anti-Apple because they
actually innovate and have the audacity to charge for their products."

"Apple has done far more to make the world a better place than any corporation
I've ever heard of. Far more than any government in history ever has. Far more
than any charity every has or ever could."

~~~
plinkplonk
+1 for a kill file. I'd also love a 'follow' mechanism. Only a small subset of
HN users post deeply insightful posts and if I could see only their posts and
comments, that would be a great time saver.

~~~
lotharbot
Follow mechanism: <http://hackerfollow.com/>

------
akashshah
According to <https://jcs.org/projects/> "Lobsters (2012 - present) - A link
aggregation site that I created after I was banned from Hacker News."

EDIT - also found <https://lobste.rs/s/bkeYe9/about_lobsters> which explains
some features

~~~
tptacek
JCS was banned from Hacker News? What the hell?

~~~
jsprink_ban2
I got the same treatment he did -- and have on accounts I have made since --
and we exchanged emails during development. We both went through each others'
posts and couldn't find any rational reason for the treatment (slow banning
and hell banning, in both of our cases).

Lack of transparency is a pretty big deal on this forum, and once you've
crossed Paul -- without knowing how -- it's scorched earth on any account you
make. That's why Josh developed Lobsters, and why I'm user #2, and why I'm
glad to see it's gaining traction as a community.

This site is more threatening to opinion and discourse than any on the public
Internet, and that isn't hyperbole. The irony is that this is a hacker
community, and most hackers would be appalled at slamming the door and
creating a curated garden of ideas. I've posted as jsprink_banned and
jsprinkles on the topic, if you're interested; won't spam this thread with it.

~~~
tptacek
Graham allows the dumbest people on the Internet to come onto this site to
berate startups he all but begged people to create, but hellbanned a guy who
pooped out a better version of HN in his spare time, for nothing. For fuck's
sake.

~~~
zizee
I honestly can't tell if you are agreeing with what the parent wrote or
disagreeing.

I'm leaning toward disagreement.

~~~
zizee
Not sure what the down vote was for, it was a genuine question. The parents
comment IS ambiguous and I would be interested in a clarification.

Sometimes it is difficult to pickup on sarcasm in the written word. This post
is not being sarcastic. Neither was my one above.

------
rauljara
Explanation for the site being invite only:

"Not for exclusivity, but rather, invitations will be used as a spam-control
mechanism. New users must be invited by a current member and invitations will
be unlimited (unless scaling problems temporarily prevent new accounts). If
spammers are invited to the site and banned, the user that invited them may
also be banned, going up the chain of invitations as needed."

Seems basically sane, though I imagine the site would be pretty cliquish at
first. You do have a pretty strong disincentive for inviting people you don't
know.

Any member want to break up the cliquishness by inviting me? If you trust
metrics, my high average karma means I'm probably less of a risk. Probably.

~~~
roryokane
I’ll invite you, but you’ll have to put your email address in the “about”
section of your HN profile first. (The address in the “email” section of your
profile is not publicly viewable.) Or you can just write your email in a
comment reply if you’d prefer.

~~~
Hates_
Anyone able to invite me?

~~~
Hates_
Thank you, I now have an invite :)

------
dmix
After 4.6 years of using HN obsessively, I'm surprised to find that I'm really
hoping this takes off (I was ready to hate on it).

After hearing the JCS story and remembering my own experience of PG
manipulating headlines + killing my own frontpage submission, I'm all for
this.

I'm also tried of the YC job listings from companies that launched 4yrs ago
flooding the homepage.

~~~
SimianLogic2
_cough_ HeyZap _cough_

------
edw519
When it comes to learning, sharing, and growing together, online or otherwise,
there are no competitors, winners, or losers. Just a bigger pie.

(Good luck to lobste.rs, but I'll probably be staying right here on hn.)

~~~
nreece
I disagree with that notion.

I've been a contributor on HN for around 5 years and over the period of time
I've seen a constant decline in the quality of comments, community support
(read some of the 'Show HN' posts) and to an extent even the quality of the
stories submitted.

A new improved hacker/startup community can be a serious contender for
replacing HN (in its current state), just like Reddit is/was to Digg and
others.

~~~
sharkweek
I'm relatively new to HN (<1year) and the one thing I notice on here is a
HEAVY amount of cynicism. Perhaps the tech industry needs that to keep itself
in check, but I feel like a lot of argumentative comments can sometimes be
REALLY nasty.

I understand that in a competitive, fast paced and big money industry there
will be massive egos, but I could sure do without some of the jerks

~~~
batgaijin
Well a real problem is the fact that it takes no effort to by cynical. It
doesn't take intelligence or facts to be cynical, only doubt under the cover
of pragmatism.

~~~
channingwalton
Nice!

------
lupatus
This reminds me of a tale from the Internet of yesteryear...

Long ago, circa the year 2000, I was a member of the very first niche social
network, makeoutclub.com (MOC)[1], a site originally about indie rock music.
One day, a group of members got tired of gibby's (the owner) benign
dictatorship and mutinied. The group started lipstickandcigarettes.com (L&C),
which is now a parked domain. At the time, L&C targeted the same demographic,
but was very restrictive on which hipsters could join and had a more savvy GUI
than MOC. It had great early success in attracting members interested in indie
rock from MOC. Eventually, though, the proprietors of L&C lost interest and
let the community there dissolve in order to pursue other interests (there
were rumors of drug addiction at the time, IIRC). MOC, on the other hand, is
still going strong and presumably making money for gibby.

I suppose the moral to my story is this: unless your social network fiefdom
actively feeds your pocketbook (as MOC does for gibby and HN does for pg),
expect to lose interest in maintaining it once the novelty of protest has worn
off.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makeoutclub>

------
benologist
This looks pretty good but a few things come to mind:

\- no comment collapsing, long comment threads will become a problem just like
they are here which ends up sucking, I'd love to see something like reddit's
threading / collapsing and I'd really love to a see a whole other forum-ish
way to browse stories as well so discussion is even more emphasized

\- no registration sucks, there are easier ways to identify spammers such as
their obvious affiliation with particular website(s), auto-submission honey
pots, even a manual glance at submission and other stats can be pretty
revealing

The biggest concern though is the site's own affiliations ... digg needed
their widget everywhere which ensured the quality was locked into a downward
spiral. HN gives TC traffic in exchange for publicity, and of course all the
preferential treatment and posts by YC startups is less interesting now that
their batches are so large. What happens when it's time for lobste.rs to pay
for itself?

I really do think it's time to replace HN though, it's mainstream and it's
targeted by rubbish publications and it's full of users who are here to
exploit it or to be exploited by rubbish sites who manipulate them with
stunning precision.

I'd love an invite if someone's giving them out.

------
sgdesign
This headline does seem unusually misleading. I already came across this site
10 days ago, it doesn't seems like it was "launched" in any fashion? And it's
not by Yehuda Katz, and also doesn't seem like a HN "competitor" since it
probably doesn't want to attract as big an audience.

So basically there are three things that are flat-out wrong with this
headline.

~~~
why-el
It _is_ a HN competitor. The person who built says they did so out of
frustration with HN.

~~~
jsprink_ban2
The motivation for creating something is not necessarily its primary purpose.

------
jeffool
Exclusionary tagging seems nice.

More than giving why you're downvoting, I wish HN didn't ban/banish-to-
purgatory people for low karma, but for upheld flagged posts. Someone can be
horribly wrong, often, and still learn, and become worthwhile to the group. At
least in theory.

------
bane
Seems to solve my biggest HN complaint, downvotes without reasons. I'd love to
give it a spin and see how that works in practice.

~~~
saurik
Slashdot also had upvotes with reasons, and I personally think that is just as
important if you agree with downvotes with reasons: it lets you differentiate
between things that added new information, made good arguments, or was simply
funny.

That said, the problem with downvotes with reasons is that it now feels much
more harsh. I'm downvoting something that is clearly an insulting comment that
should not have been made on the site, and yet I'm wondering "do I really want
to use the term 'troll'? that seems harsh".

------
bravura
Interestingly, you can see the user invitation tree here:

<https://lobste.rs/u/>

So if you want an invitation, you should see if you know anyone on that lists.

[edit: "If spammers are invited to the site and banned, the user that invited
them may also be banned, going up the chain of invitations as needed." If your
parent gets banned, do all children get banned?]

------
roryokane
Can an existing user of Lobsters please send me an invite? (My email is in my
profile.)

According to <https://lobste.rs/s/bkeYe9/about_lobsters>, the only reason
Lobsters is invite-only is to prevent spammers from signing up. So if you want
to check that I’m not a spammer, just glance at my past comments
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=roryokane>) and submissions
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=roryokane>).

If you still want another reason to send me an invite, I support the idea of
an improved Hacker News – pg seems to barely care about improving HN. I might
contribute to the Lobsters code at <https://github.com/jcs/lobsters>.

~~~
roryokane
Someone sent me an invite – thanks!

~~~
rjsamson
That's awesome - any chance you could pay it forward? My email is also in my
profile. Thanks!

------
DigitalSea
I would really love an invite to this. Competition is good regardless of
whether or not it was created out of spite. I often wish there were more
competing sites to HN because the quality of the moderation and the way things
work around here has really deteriorated as of late.

I don't know the reasoning of Paul Graham hell-banning people on this site for
merely questioning the way it's moderated or for whatever reason, but the lack
of transparency on HN is a big issue that needs to be fixed.

As much as I love HN, I think it's time for a change and whether it be
Lobsters or another site, I am really hoping a successor breaks the ranks and
perhaps PG and the moderator team will then make an effort to fix this place.

------
mattdeboard
Honestly Prismatic is so very good at content curation -- at least for me and
my friends -- that a "tech/startup/general geekery news" content aggregator is
superfluous. I come to HN now to see the comments on the articles I read on
Prismatic.

------
xutopia
It's invite only. Tried a few different urls and got this one:
<https://lobste.rs/signup>

~~~
rhizome
So it's not actually launched, but more of a ShowHN.

~~~
prezjordan
It's very much launched. Been out for a month and a half now. And I don't
think OP has any affiliation.

~~~
rhizome
Why ever would it be appropriate to post this here, not to mention with the
(now-edited) false headline, in read-only mode?

~~~
prezjordan
People can still check out what's happening there. It's nice to hear about a
new site (I wouldn't have heard about it otherwise). Also, I'm not sure what
the title (used) to be so I can't comment on that.

~~~
rhizome
"Yehuda Katz launches Lobste.rs" where he is only a user and not involved
behind the site at all. As noted elsewhere, it is run by someone who was
banned by HN because they were banned from HN, so, to me, a presumption of bad
faith is warranted.

------
pbiggar
While I hope this doesn't split the HN community, I hope it also serves as a
wake up call that HN needs to improve or it will die. Some parts of Lobsters
are really really good for solving some of the problems that HN has:

\- invite only to prevent spam and increase accountability

\- tags are ideal for the problem where not everyone cares about everything -
getting to be a major gripe you see a lot ("oh my god, do we have to have
another discussion about X")

\- HN needs significantly better transparency in bans, title rewrites, etc. I
don't believe that PG has an agenda or needs to protect YC companies, but the
issue comes up so much that it needs to be addressed

\- reasons for downvotes are genius

\- private messages are worthwhile IMO

\- the domain indicator is actually useful (sick of seeing co.uk or github.com
instead of myblog.github.com)

Other things HN needs:

\- to work: the fact that "more" barely works is astonishing

\- an API for all the apps that want to provide a better or different
experience

\- comment collapsing - an essential feature for actually reading past the
first comment thread

\- a meta site where we can actually discuss this stuff without violating
guidelines (meta.stackoverflow.com is one of the most innovative and important
community tools ever, IMO)

I've heard "there are no technical solutions to social problems" as reasons
not to do a lot of these, but the same argument could apply to the downvote.
HN needs to innovate to keep its community, and I hope it does.

------
tomwalsham
Some stream of consciousness thoughts on the history of internet communities,
particularly those centred around tech.

Usenet had immense value in well defined subgroups prior to the Eternal
September (and for some time after, regardless of what people may say). IRC
ha(s|d) similar values, and remains a force within niche communities on the
tech side. Slashdot was an early mover in the moderated community space which
had to arise from the newfound populist web.

I still think /.'s comment moderation was superior to the HN system (pre and
post-visible comment scores), but the firehose was too late and too poorly
implemented to solve editorial issues.

In the middle of this, Kuro5hin rose and fell, metafilter grabbed some
component of the serious moderated discussion which it still retains. Fark
came and went. Boingboing, SA, b3ta. All significant for a time but not names
on people's lips today.

HN cannibalised a significant portion of /., but failed to convert the
greybeards - the discussion here is noticeably different because of it (and
lacking the perspective sometimes).

Digg suffered greatly from demagogues (as does HN to an extent), descended too
rapidly into linkbait and celebpop trash, and fell to Reddit. The redesign was
just the nail in the coffin of an already dead community.

Reddit became a very granular experience from its initial tech focus, with a
current frontpage of dubious intellectual interest, but their popularity
speaks wonders for the ad-hoc community created by diverse interest groups
with a common central park. They struggle with discovery for new members, and
an apparently descending base age group.

Communities come and go. Small herds migrate towards the latest point of
interest and some stick. Groupthink is a large driver of community malaise,
certainly within the tech discussion arena. Individuals dominate submissions
and discussions and evolve to minor demagogue status. Some communities evolve
to tackle a smaller arena than just the general topical discussion field, but
topicality remains critical.

Quora has tackled 'big answers'. StackOverflow 'correct answers'. These are
some minor elements of the value of the larger communities, much in the same
way that Hipmunk, AirBnb etc have abstracted value away from Craigslist.
Hyperlocal is the next big thing with FrontPorchForum and NextDoor tacking
non-technical local discussion.

I still view the approaches to these problems as relatively unsolved and ripe
for disruption, in particular the algorithms related to subject and comment
popularity, user 'karma' (for better or worse), and approachable comment
threading when a userbase grows beyond the 'scan a single page' scale. I'm not
convinced that a one-size-fits-all approach will ever work, but even within
niche tribes there remains a problem with staying 'current' while avoiding
alienating the 1-2% who drive much of the discussion.

I fully expect a new dominant discussion forum to arise in the tech scene in
the next couple of years, but Lobsters seems to be a kneejerk reimplementation
of HN that even if it claws some traction would have to evolve rapidly to
solve problems rather than dangling the 2013 model of a 2012 carrot.

~~~
PakG1
_Communities come and go. Small herds migrate towards the latest point of
interest and some stick. Groupthink is a large driver of community malaise,
certainly within the tech discussion arena. Individuals dominate submissions
and discussions and evolve to minor demagogue status. Some communities evolve
to tackle a smaller arena than just the general topical discussion field, but
topicality remains critical._

I agree with this, but this is also why I have now come to seriously question
why anyone would be interested in investing in any community-based site. Let's
not mistake that for social networks (which in of themselves have their own
potential issues). But regarding community-based sites, I can't ever see any
as having long-term value, not after all the carcasses I see lying in decay on
the web. :(

------
Kilimanjaro
I Like it. Needs some modern design, minimalist and clean.

It would be sad to see HN die, but if you don't water your plants...

~~~
Kilimanjaro
It definitely needs some background, cue from /r/apple might be a good idea.

Also a distinctive header in a different color.

A footer.

Remove bold from links in front page and

    
    
        Font-size 1.2em
        Line-height 1.2
    

Hmm, I'll work on something tomorrow. You guys should open a contest just to
let the good vibe flow.

~~~
fakeempire
> It definitely needs some background, cue from /r/apple might be a good idea.

Please, please no. Its fine the way it is.

------
inuhj
My favorite forum feature is 'the blender'. I first saw it on
nuclearphynance.com(and not since). Once a critical number of people blend a
thread it gets deleted so as not to pollute the list of threads.

In practice it worked very well. The overwhelming majority of blended threads
were from new users who were still getting a hang of the quality standards for
posting in the forum.

~~~
1gor
What are 'blended threads'?

~~~
inuhj
When speaking about forums each topic and its associated posts are referred to
as a thread.

------
wmf
About Lobsters: <https://lobste.rs/s/bkeYe9/about_lobsters>

This isn't linked anywhere obvious on the site itself.

------
tszming
Quite good, e.g. enforced SSL, responsive layout, tag, built in search, feed
ordered by time ...

------
astrodust
This has to go down as the biggest missed opportunity ever.

The name _has_ to be in Lobster
(<http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Lobster>). This is not an optional
thing. Come on.

------
w1ntermute
One thing I liked right off the bat was a good mobile experience. The fact
that you still can't get this on HN is quite appalling to me.

------
davyjones
There is also the open sourced clone Lamer News (<http://lamernews.com/>) by
antirez.

------
Xcelerate
Huh, this looks pretty cool. I like the transparency. JCS, can I get an
invitation?

~~~
polshaw
Me too. I'm not a member of a startup community (outside of this forum), so
unless they are given out/open up soon, i guess i will be excluded.

------
silentscope
I wonder if this article will be removed...

------
joshu
Ha, I was just thinking about how to architect a discussion forum (ala HN)
this morning.

------
spitfire
It's much faster than HN. No long pauses when loading pages.

~~~
Lazare
That may mean you've been slowbanned from HN. If you slightly annoy a
moderator around here they'll flag your account so you see very long page load
delays.

Try logging out of HN, and see if the long pauses go away for you.

~~~
spitfire
Oh, there's almost zero doubt I've annoyed a moderator at some point.

There's no list of moderators anywhere is there? I could tick off the ones I
haven't annoyed.

~~~
Lazare
Nope, no list of moderators. You'll never know who, and you'll never know why,
and you probably won't be able to get it reversed.

Also, Macro: The step beyond slowbanning is hellbanning, where nobody can see
your comments except you, and users with "show dead" on. You've been
hellbanned for over a year. As to why...maybe some mod thought your first
comment was a bit content free. Maybe they were just having a bad day. I'd
recommend getting a new account.

~~~
Xcelerate
Haha, poor Macro. Look at his comment history:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Macro>

------
swah
I remember how much I really enjoyed seeing points...

------
marcamillion
Hell-banned and slow-banned? I didn't know that mods for HN would do that to
users they disagree with.

Spammers, I can understand....but users you disagree with.

Wow....just wow.

------
bhousel
It's about time.

------
ilaksh
Looks cool. But what about people like me who don't have any friends but still
have interesting ideas?

~~~
citricsquid
I would like to see an invite only site that had an application process where
an inviter can pick out applications they like from the pool. This way the
people of value but without networking are fine.

~~~
robotmay
I think that's how Dribbble works, and it's quite a good way of doing it.

------
mindcrime
If somebody would be kind enough to invite me, it would be much appreciated.
Email in profile...

------
dbecker
It's a shame there isn't an about page that suggests what will be different
(or better) about lobste.rs from HN. If it's just a clone site where a
different set of people post the same articles and similar comments, I won't
waste my time.

~~~
roryokane
There is an about page, though there’s no link to it on the site:
<https://lobste.rs/s/bkeYe9/about_lobsters>

------
jschuur
So it's like a country club for hackers? No explanation of what it is
(scope/core philosophy) other than the links. No sign-up, or even an
indication of how to join or why there isn't a general sign-up form.

Somewhat off putting, elitist first impression.

~~~
jschuur
OK, to be fair, it does look like there's a normal sign-up/application feature
that was just quickly disabled/commented out:

[https://lobste.rs/s/senl3p/lobsters_discussion_on_hacker_new...](https://lobste.rs/s/senl3p/lobsters_discussion_on_hacker_news/comments/eiuvbl)

------
ChuckMcM
Now if he can implement the multi-root voting system that would be way cool.

------
tptacek
Neato.

------
npguy
What is really needed, is a HN for other domains outside of technology.

------
lathamcity
I prefer HN's background.

------
gobengo
I support this. It's kind of ridiculous to see YC company's job postings on
the front page all the time. And there's no reason to conflate the cult of YC
with actual hacker news.

------
donnfelker
It looks like a cool site, would be nice if we could register.

------
ulisesrmzroche
Can anyone spare an invite? I'd really like to join up!

------
jcr
It's unfair to blame Paul Graham for every moderation decision made on HN.
It's been stated that YC funded founders help with moderation and editing on
HN, and it's a safe bet that YC partners also have elevated permissions here.
If you're like me, a normal HN user, then you will never know all the details.
If you find yourself having a bias based on knowingly incomplete information,
then you need to stop and rethink your position.

The most any normal user can say for certain about jcs getting hellbanned is,
he did _something_ annoying enough that _someone_ did something about it!!!
--Unfortunately, if you believed the previous sentence, you are mistaken.

The reality is, a lot of stuff on HN is automated. If you do bad stuff, bad
things happen to you (your account) automatically. For example, if you get
into a flame war and pass the "posting too fast" threshold, you could get
warnings initially, and if you still don't stop, you could hellban yourself.
In other words, you simply never know if a human being with moderator
privileges did something, or if you did it to yourself. Also, you don't know
if it's permanent or temporary.

The most I can say with real certainty is, pg is smart enough to design a
system which merely gives users enough rope to hang themselves. I would do the
same, and if you've studied the problem in depth, you would too. Eliminating
human moderation through computerized automation is the only sane way to
design a discussion forum.

Now if you were a long time, active contributor like jcs, and you ensnared
yourself in the sites protective automation, and you thought _someone_ was
doing it to you, then ya, you might be miffed. You would probably _react_
harshly, and by doing so, make matters even worse for yourself and give
yourself even more "reason" to be upset.

Have you ever watched someone get absolutely livid at a chat bot?

It's hilarious. It may be a wee bit sadistic to let them keep trading
increasingly heated insults with a machine, but it's still fun to watch. At
the end, they might learn a valuable lesson.

With pg, there's one thing I've come to rely on; he means well. There is no
requirement to agree with him on everything, but if over many years you've
watched him carefully, studied the things he's said and done, or better,
interacted with him, then you can be reasonably certain that he means well.

If you know anything at all about Y-Combinator, then you already know that
Paul has far more important things to do than mess around with HN. If you
don't know the history of HN, you're at a disadvantage; it was started as a
for-fun side project to test out the ARC programming language, and HN was
originally called "Startup News" for a very good reason -- to attract people
with an interest in startups. The name was eventually changed to "Hacker News"
due to the retrospectively obvious oversight; a lot of the best coders haven't
really thought about doing a startup, and the people interested in startups
are often already doing one. Broadening the scope of appeal with the name
change makes sense.

If you haven't read everything Paul has written, then you don't about the
massive amount of time and effort he's put into thinking about the
interactions between people on (open) forums, and how to encourage beneficial
exchanges between (potentially conflicting) people. HN is now, and always has
been, an ongoing experiment to improve the ratio of beneficial exchanges in
discussions, as well as reduce human moderation overhead. It's fun watching it
evolve.

And lastly no, of the small bits of HN secret sauce I've discovered over the
years, I absolutely refuse to give you the details. If the details were
public, then some people would use them to game the system.

~~~
lwat
I DO blame PG for the mindless enforcement of the "Title MUST match the linked
page's title" rule. Sometimes this is a good rule but there really are
exceptions!

EXAMPLE: This very post was actually submitted with the title

Yehuda Katz launches HN competitor - Lobsters

but then some mod just changed it to 'lobsters' which means absolutely
nothing. How is that an improvement?

EDIT: Please invite me to Lobsters!

~~~
jcr
Well, it's an improvement on the basis of stopping the spread of false
information; Yehuda Katz did not create lobsters. jcs did.

Sure, the edit could have been both more correct and more informative, but
most people have better things than endlessly (re)correct trivial and
inconsequential stuff like titles that might matter for only a handful of
hours.

My question for you is, "When you're on your death bed with fleeting time left
in your life, will you consider the time you spent on this issue of title
editing to be well spent or wasted?

If I don't reply, at least you'll know why.

~~~
lwat
When you are on your deathbed, will you be happy with the time you spent
editing titles?

------
andybak
It's frankly embarrassing to have to ask this in public but if anyone would
care to invite me, it looks like my kind of place.

------
reustle
I feel it's pretty hard to look at. HN is simple, but still designed well.
This, on the other hand, feels cramped.

------
orangethirty
Variety is what makes HN so engaging. If I wanted to read exclusivly about
computers, I would just hit usenet.

------
patdennis
I'd be interested in trying this out. Can anyone offer an invite? My email is
available via my profile.

------
andrewljohnson
I was trying really hard to register so I could make some votes and comments,
but could not.

------
nikcub
* clone HN

* put a link to it at the top of HN

* expect something different to HN?

------
marcamillion
I would like an invitation also - if someone is monitoring this and giving new
ones away.

Thanks :)

------
chj
Oh no, invitation only.

------
calgaryeng
I'd like an invite...

~~~
Devilboy
Me too please! Pretty please? ^_^

I promise to behave!

------
samgranieri
I'd like to register on the site

------
jrawlings
can anyone spare an invite? :)

------
grandpoobah
An invite would be nice.

------
hiphopopotamus
Where's the about page?

------
bertomartin
Did he use emberjs for the interface? If not, why Not?

------
stratos2
dont like the white background. at all.

------
sajithdilshan
if reddit and HN had a child, it would look like lobster.

------
jsprink_ban2
Some thoughts from user #2:

\- Joshua Stein developed Lobsters by himself. Yahuda Katz was, to my
knowledge, uninvolved.

\- The site is invite only because, and I'm speaking for Josh here and mostly
guessing (he'd be a better person to ask), it's still trying to identify
itself. Communities are grown organically and I gather Josh is letting
Lobsters grow slowly, intentionally. I don't think he has "launched" it, per
se.

\- I emailed Josh to support him when he was hellbanned (as my HN story
parallels his), and a couple months after that exchange he invited me to the
site. I don't participate much at all -- heads down on a product -- but I
think it has potential.

\- I have 5:1 odds the headline will not be fixed, even though there are three
factual errors in that tiny bit of text (Katz, HN Competitor, Launched).

------
frenchfries
is it possible to get invited? or do I need to have a mac book pro and be a
ruby fanboy?

------
marshallp
Great, another a site with ruby on rail kids discussing shiny web design.

~~~
samgranieri
whats wrong with that?

~~~
marshallp
It's great if you're a kid, but when you grow up you should work on solving
cancer or making spaceships.

~~~
lwat
Which of those are you doing?

~~~
marshallp
both

