

Offer HN: create a collaborative tech blog? - alexis-d

Hi fellow HN readers!<p>tl;dr: what about setting up a community blog about technical topics?<p>Sometimes I want to share my experience/knowledge on some subjects, but I don't want to maintain a blog which I'll update only a few time per year. So I was thinking that if some of you are like me we could setup a blog where each of us could share his thoughts on whatever he want as long it remains topics that may interest HN readers. Moreover if the quality of the posts is great we may have more visibility (what's the point of writing if nobody read it?) than if each of us as his own blog lost in some dark corner of the Internet.<p>Want to tell everybody why (vim|emacs) is awesome? Want to show us your nifty new demo in (HTML5|CSS3|WebGL)? Want explain some IOCCC entries? Want to talk about internals of the Linux kernel? Rails advanced topics? Python metaclasses? Lexing and parsing? Node? Something else? It's ok, c'mon guys I'm pretty sure we can do something together! We just have to use Hyde/Jekyll and setup a repo on Github. It'll allow us to submit new articles (via pullrequest, and discuss them before publishing them), and to fix already published articles (by submitting an issue/pullrequest).<p>What do you think about it? Would you be interested in a such project? Another questions? Just drop a comment!
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danneu
Isn't this what an aggregation like HN is in practice?

Although getting knowledge transfer from people without blogs is a good point.
But, in that case, I think a simple Wordpress setup would be better than
running from a git repository. I think we tend to overlook git as the barrier
of entry that it is.

What gives HN its value is that it's already curated, so if you decide to do
this, I think there needs to be a voting system to help give weight to
particularly good points.

I could see this turning into too much of a directionless, superfluous stack
of tech posts, though.

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Kaizyn
You're right that quality will become an issue for such a collaborative tech
blog. To do it properly, the posts would have to go through some sort of peer
review and editorial process - hopefully community driven. In fact, this could
form a nice quality gateway... Basically, if your article cannot get two other
people to agree to edit/review your article and either "fix it" for you or
approve of your resubmission with the recommended changes, then it is just
quietly left to languish and die unpublished.

~~~
tikhonj
As somebody who would want to publish articles here, I see another benefit of
a peer review process--it would make sure my writing is good enough and,
hopefully, help me improve it. So I see a system like that not only
maintaining quality, but helping the authors as well.

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swanson
I think the Pull Request for article submission is a really awesome idea.
Sounds like a neat idea, you should start it up.

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pault
This is a great idea, but a lot of thought needs to be put into how it could
be abused. Some potential problems that come to mind immediately are: self-
promotion, low quality posts, SEO shenanigans, and wikipedia style edit wars.

What keeps HN relevant and high-quality is the flagging and voting system, and
I don't know how that translates to a git-based architecture.

EDIT: I misunderstood how github's pull requests work. Sounds like a perfect
tool to maintain community standards.

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tikhonj
I think this is where using pull requests to submit articles really shines.

The community would vet articles and potentially help with editing and
clarity. This would help contributors make sure their articles are well-
written and well thought-out, while giving readers consistently high-quality
content.

Of course, this requires an at least moderately engaged community of
contributors, but I think that's completely reasonable. We would also have to
be careful not to scare away insightful people who aren't great writers, but I
think it would be manageable.

~~~
pault
I agree. Who gets push access to master?

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tikhonj
If not too many people want to post at the start, it can always just be a
volunteer or two from the initial pool of interested people.

Perhaps, at the very beginning, the submitter could just take care of all the
administration (hopefully it's not too much work) and everybody could work out
a system for discussing and approving posts as a group.

~~~
alexis-d
By the way the "big thing" isn't the hardest part of this. The most important
thing is probably the review of issue/pull request, and everybody who want to
help can do that ;)

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hasnointentions
Sounds like a good idea. If you execute it, I hope you'll give some careful
thought to hierarchy/organization/browsability. It'd be nice to have a
community knowledge base that could be an alternative to the
declarative/referential tone of a wiki. Well organized blogging could probably
be a valuable artifact.

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randall
Pull requests would be awesome. We've got something similar to this for the
UtahJS community.

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prawn
Random, half-baked thought:

Set up a blog with 10 participants. Each person writes/curates for 1-3 days
and then hands on responsibility. Any AdSense revenue from the site is split
by randomly displaying account holder AdSense IDs. A contributor must complete
one cycle before their ID joins the ad display pool.

Motivation for writing is enforced to some degree by swapping out a writer if
they fail to contribute during their period of responsibility for the blog.

Encourage writers to queue up ideas or entries to cover for being stumped or
busy when their time comes.

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tikhonj
Sounds brilliant.

I'm a student, so I don't have enough time (and probably don't know enough) to
maintain my own blog, but I would love to write an article or two once in a
while.

Also, discussing articles with other contributors before publication sounds
like a great way for me to improve my own writing quality--it's like free
editing.

What do you (and other interested people) think the minimum number of
contributors is? How many people would make something like this both
interesting and lasting (e.g. people continue publishing posts in the far
future)?

~~~
alexis-d
I don't really know it really depends on the number of a contributor! The goal
isn't to have a huge blog with 20posts/day. The hard thing is to get a
motivated team to get started to be sure the idea will last (there's no point
if everybody post something at the beginning and then nothing).

Maybe we should start to talk on IRC? Or Google groups to see who's motivated?

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andrewfelix
Would love to contribute to the design. Can also offer UI/UX skills, sitemaps,
wireframes etc. <http://www.andrew-rose.com>

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saiko-chriskun
I'm for it :D. I've tried maintaining a blog a couple times but never end up
writing enough, and as you said therefore no one reads the few things I do
manage to write up :P.

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Vivtek
That sounds like a great idea! I'd be quite interested. (Email in profile -
keep me posted if you put together a mailing list or whatever.)

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there
sounds like advogato - <http://advogato.org/recentlog.html?thresh=3>

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soho33
I created a site called learnfrom.it which is coming down tomorrow since i got
busy with other stuff. But if you guys want i can put it back up so people can
contribute. Aside from being busy it was hard to get people to contribute so
if people volunteer i'll keep it up and change the cstegories so its tech
focus.

Check out the site and let me know

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robdoherty2
Good idea! I'd be interested in such a blog for the very reasons you mention.
And I'd be sure to learn a lot in the process.

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kittxkat
That sounds like planet-aggregation to me, something like planet.ubuntu.com,
but could be set up as planet.hackernews.com or something.

As I love to read planets, I'm all up for it. I agree to your argument, what's
the point of blogging if nobody reads it. And why have 100 blogs rss'ed if you
could have them all in one place.

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harrisonp
Awesome idea. Hook up a repo and post back! I'm up for helping out, and
collabing on the actual site too.

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cnu
Coincidentally, I had such an idea for a long time and have started writing an
application for such a blog in my spare time. But my blog isnt just for the
tech community. Will do a "Show HN" soon, when I have a working site.

But would be nice to see a github hosted version.

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phzbOx
I like it; I do agree that there are many blogs hidden somewhere with gems in
them. Meanwhile, when posting on HN, you can use the 'text' inside of the url
and write the article in it. It's not nearly the same; but it's tweetable and
can get feedback/exposure to the community.

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Navarr
I currently write an article or two every now and then over at
<http://tech.navarr.me/>. I'd love to work on a more collaborative project,
where I can write every now and then and not be part of a dead corner of the
net.

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achompas
This is an excellent idea--would love to contribute somehow! Contact info is
in my profile.

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joshfraser
Love the idea. You should talk to the guys at kapost.com. They're a platform
for group blogging and have lots of the features you'd want for managing a
bunch of different editors on one blog.

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NathanKP
That sounds like a neat idea. I'd be happy to contribute occasional article
and/or an EC2 instance that the blog could be hosted on if needed.

~~~
pault
Would it not be hosted as github pages?

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anujkk
Sounds great. I'm not regular at it but still I would love to make occasional
contributions. My contact details are in my profile.

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strepx
If you require.. i can contribute in domain and blog maintenance and Some
article contribution.

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jhaddon
This idea interests me, I'd love to help out in any way I can. Email is in my
profile.

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soho33
Link: <http://www.learnfrom.it>

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pault
I'm confused; without any explanation of why you are posting this link here,
it appears you are trying to trick people into thinking that this is the
collaborative tech blog proposed in the submission, unless it is, in which
case you could use a little help with the messaging on the landing page.

EDIT: Okay, I see your comment elsewhere on the page. You should probably post
this as a child of that comment to avoid confusion.

~~~
soho33
Sorry for the confusion. I've added the link as a reply to my original post. I
do agree the "explanation" could use some changing! The initial idea was to
put a blog together for people to share their experiences with others without
having to maintain their own blog, similar to this. I do agree that it needs a
lot of work since i only put it together in a few days reusing old code.

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dlf
I'd get involved. I have a lot of editing experience too, if that helps.

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andresdouglas
As far as showing off nifty demos. www.HackerCache.com is coming soon.

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androobear
I'm interested as well. Lifehacker for programmers and startups!

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karterk
Sounds awesome, count me in (email in profile).

