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Poll: Would HN benefit from Reddit's AMA-style posts from technologists?
433 points by daenz on Feb 19, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 175 comments
On Reddit, just from this month alone, there have been some great AMAs that I personally think HN would be great participants in:

Stevin Levitt from Freakonomics http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18tp7t/i_am_steven_levitt_author_of_freakonomics_ask_me/

Bill Gates http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/

Peter Sunde of ThePirateBay http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/187iwo/i_am_peter_sunde_cofounder_of_tpb_ama/

SpaceX Software Engineers http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1853ap/we_are_spacex_software_engineers_we_launch/

Do you think this this is something we could start on HackerNews?

Yes
2077 points
No
545 points
No, it would be a distraction from the core content
353 points
Maybe, as long as stayed civil and interesting
222 points
Yes, and I personally know someone who might be interested in doing one
68 points
Yes, but I don't think anyone interesting would participate
53 points
No, I don't think anyone interesting would participate
48 points



Why don't we let Reddit be Reddit, and HN be HN?

Why would I want HN to be a megaphone for Famous Joe Blow X when I'd much rather have him actively participating and helping out in the threads with the rest of us?

This is a very bad idea in my opinion. Since I have no clue how to run a busy site, that means it'll probably happen. :)


Why would I want HN to be a megaphone for Famous Joe Blow X when I'd much rather have him actively participating and helping out in the threads with the rest of us?

Because the odds of getting Famous Joe Blow X to run a HN AMA are much, much higher than getting him to become an active HNer. We're talking about a one-time commitment versus extended involvement in our community.

Look at the roster of AMA guests on Reddit. How many of them are active Redditors? It's non-zero, but not substantially so. And yet, by participating in AMAs, they enrich Reddit's community.

EDIT EDIT: removed some belly-aching


> by participating in AMAs, they enrich Reddit's community

That's the part I'm skeptical of, at least keeping in mind what community means in the HN sense. They don't really seem to be part of the Reddit community at all; they're more like the "content" that the Reddit community is discussing any given day. What's more interesting about the HN community to me is that some pretty accomplished people are actually part of the community.

Given the quality of questions/answers in a typical AMA, I'm not even sure how it's different from just linking to an offsite TechCrunch interview. Is it just some kind of fuzzy feeling of having participated?


I agree, I think the fuzzy feeling sums it up. Celebrity AMA's are some of the most unenlightening things I've ever read. You get some obvious questions about obvious subjects and the answer is usually some variation of 'yeah that was great'. It should be no surprise either - its a conversation started with no premise. If someone consequential to an issue decides to comment on that issue it can be very very interesting. Hackernews still has that to some degree. Even if its gone, can we not resurrect it as this zombie?


> they're more like the "content" that the Reddit community is discussing any given day.

I think this sums them up nicely. This is also why I feel they would be out of place in a forum centered around discussion, like HN.


You could see an HN AMA as one person chiming in on multiple discussions in a short time (which may be much more doable for them), this depends on the questions asked, of course. And that is something HN hopefully regulates by itself.

Just since the 'setup' is the same, it doesn't mean the results will be the same. HN as a whole vs Reddit is proof of this on itself, I would say.


That's not a half-bad idea at all, actually.


"Because the odds of getting Famous Joe Blow X to run a HN AMA are much, much higher than getting him to become an active HNer"

However, if Mr. Blow is not going to be active on HN anyway, what is the advantage of an AMA on HN over one on Reddit? And since the goal is to have Mr. Blow answer questions, what evidence is there that he is more likely to do so on HN than Reddit?

What makes HN great is not really fucking smart people answering fifteen questions of varying quality in 90 minutes. It's RFSP spending 90 minutes answering one really good question.


> EDIT: wait what, downvote? For speaking the truth?

Calm your self:) It can happen easily by accident from things like small buttons on mobile devices.

Your comment has a positive score, isn't that enough of a positive signal?


The down arrow makes voting pretty much impossible on mobile devices. Can I get 18 downvotes here so my karma will be below 500 and I won't have to put up with the down arrow anymore?


There are various HN interfaces people have written specifically for mobile. There's http://hckrn.ws/ and http://ihackernews.com/ for starters.

A quick google search reveals https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id434787119?mt=8 for iOS, which includes a "confirm votes" toggle setting. There's https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rickylaish... for android as well.


I won't quote the belly aching, but it's relevant. Would reddit's AMAs work without "vigorous" downvoting?


Can the possibility of one-time commitment reduce extended involvement ‘rate’, or otherwise negatively affect community (attract unexpected public, possibly)? Taking into account differences between the audiences of HN and Reddit.


i think a fair few are active redditors but they dont use their anonymous accounts for their AMA for obvious reasons. Perhaps not Woody Harrelson.

Of course there is the reverse, where Will Shatner didnt want to do an AMA as he intended to stick around on a daily basis as opposed to a "one night only" type of event. That sort of thing seems to be what HN would prefer (if it wasnt will shatner but someone more useful).


Many AMAs are not about famous people, but just people that are in a position you would love to ask them questions, in general or because of some specific news / event in the world or alike. With that I don't want to say that AMAs are necessarily good for HN.


I agree. Even with my short time I have spent on HN, I find the place to be much more civil and information with less clutter than Reddit. Keep HN's identity strong and don't try to "copy" Reddit. I would think that if you allow a few AMAs it will quickly devolve as everyone would want to do an AMA.


AMAs still have to get upvoted and have questions posted. If J. Random Whoareyouagain posts an AMA, it'll either die in "new" with 2 points, or fall off the front page with 10 points and two comments.


HN AMAs would fill a niche that doesn't really exist elsewhere: the opportunity to have questions asked by an audience focussed on tech and entrepreneurship. Reddit's too mainstream to get questions about the things HNers tend to care about upvoted. I'd certainly appreciate the flavour that HN would bring to an AMA.


Having the greatest technologists of our time answer our questions would be a huge distraction from the arguments over which language is better.


It can be both. An AMA is "Ask me anything" which is more focused on somebody (Or something that happened).. which is very different than the same person posting a meaningful comment on a discussion. As far as I know, PG regularly comments on HN and there are often links to his essay or interviews. An AMA isn't so much different than an interview...


To me, it would be ideal if AMAs were split off into their own site, rather than piggybacking off HN or Reddit. Same with ELI5.

(Also, the meta-implications of the fact that this poll is asking about AMAs rather than ELI5 amuses me.)


ELI5: what are the meta implications that amuse you - for someone that just had to google "ELI5" :)

(explain like I'm 5)


I too had to lookup ELI5 and am at a complete loss regarding any implications, meta or otherwise.


The implication is that HNers are more interested in Q&A sessions over what amounts to a lecture. You could frame that as positively or negatively as you like: a fixation on fame and fortune over substance; a disinterest in having someone else explain what you could learn on your own; a preference for an interactive setting rather than a receptive one; etc.


The level of discourse in HN comments is leaps and bounds better than that in Reddit. At the very least, you'd get a much more useful and legible comment thread. And presumably the topics would be more focused on the HN crowd, where as Reddit runs the gamut


You are assuming that the Reddit crowd wouldn't participate in the HN AMAs.

Many probably would and, possibly worse, they might stick around.


I think your estimate of their interest or availability regarding being a regular HN participant for some of these folks is is a bit misguided.


> Why would I want HN to be a megaphone for Famous Joe Blow X when I'd much rather have him actively participating and helping out in the threads with the rest of us?

I'd much rather just straight up ask him questions instead of waiting for him to appear.


Why would you wait for him to do an AMA, then? Can't we ask questions and get answers without the help of HN—say, via email?


Famous and quasi-famous people generally don't publish their primary email. The whole point of the AMA is that it offers a public forum in which anyone can ask anything to people with whom they generally wouldn't interact.


My first reaction was similar. However, I realized that an HN AMA, need not mimic a Reddit AMA. I created a prototype HN AMA here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5250690

It doesn't seem to be very successful. Then again, I'm not that interesting.


A way of addressing this would be to have a karma threshold before someone can do an AMA.


Cheap content attracts cheap commenters. The comments and questions in AMAs rarely express novel insight -- usually, someone pipes up with a popular sentiment, like asking President Obama to stop using drone strikes. Commenting in such threads, which are inevitably mobbed, gives you the illusion of significance ("Wow, X answered my question!") or worse yet they give you actual significance ("Wow, it's X, he did an AMA") both of which function as an invitation to horse-sized-duck trolling and celebrity obsession. Do we want the users who join because Tim Cook did an AMA here once, or people who join to discuss hacking?

As the old saying goes: small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas. HN has always been a place for great minds -- let's keep it that way.


What if you required a certain amount of points or more to ask a question?

HN already has good software to deal with voting rings, so we shouldn't get too much karma whoring in response. Plus, people would have to invest in karma, because once the AMA is announced for the following day, or for right then, it's too late to get 300 (say) more points. I think it's workable.


I'm afraid if it happens, HN will be crowded with people that just got their first job and want to know how to build a website on godaddy and sell it to google.


Wait, so that's not what HN's for?


There have been a number of posts about letting Reddit be Reddit and HN be HN, but I think that problems with the level of questions on Reddit is the reason that HN should do them; to provide a more serious place for discussions with these people. It isn't totally uncommon for important people to be on HN already to talk about something they have written, and I think the community has benefited from that.

The point isn't to talk about people, its to talk about ideas with "great minds"


There are already a bunch of well known "technologists" who don't just show up to do one Q&A session, but regularly participate in the community, which is, IMO, even better.


And I'd rather they didn't think about going on HN as doing some media. Maybe we've reached that point anyway, but that would be a shame.


Problem is that it's not immediately obvious who they are just from their usernames. So it's easy to skip over their contributions.


That can enhance the discussion. I remember making a spirited reply to Yudkowsky and only noticing who he was when he replied back - but I think my not being intimidated lead to a far more productive thread than if I had seen in the first place. Posts should rise or fall on their own merits, not who has made them.


>>Posts should rise or fall on their own merits, not who has made them.

Not necessarily. On a site like this, where everyone has strong opinions on something, credibility matters. For example, I have only a rudimentary knowledge of programming, so when I read a post about JavaScript or something, I want to be able to quickly know whether the person is talking out of their ass or whether their opinion is backed up by experience and accomplishment.


Though there is often hive mind behavior based on who posts. There are some 'HN celebrities' that certainly deserve the respect they get - they are knowledgable people with great opinions - the problem is they are not always right, nor are they always adding to the discussion in a useful way - yet they get upvoted to the top immediately even when a far better contribution to the post disappears further down.


I usually find if I can't tell the difference based on the post and its replies, it's irrelevant to me anyway.


This is my favorite recent example of someone not being recognized http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5228841


I liked this one (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)


That's a HN classic. If you haven't read it do so.


That is a good one - I liked this one a lot

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5210880


It takes about 2s to pull up their profile... If they want the recognition/credibility. Some comments I'll look, most I don't.


It's not clear to me why AMAs would necessarily reduce their participation in the community, could you elaborate on that?


So the thing that struck me when I first started reading HN was that this place is a constant AMA with famous people!

Real people, real hackers, who've done impressive stuff, who aren't random bored teenagers in their boxers pretending to know about what they're waxing on about, comment here! People from Google, and MS, People who actually built the startup we're discussing, or are at the heart of the story that brought us here.

And they're here, not because they really just want to talk about Rampart[0], but because they're hackers too, and they want to contribute to the mass discussions happening every day on HN.

[0] http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/woody-harrelson-reddit-...


Yeah and I want to say this the right way, but I probably won't.

I don't give a shit who you are on HN. I'm here to collect useful stuff for the people I'm trying to help in my startups, not to get autographs. If you have something useful to contribute, thank you. I'll try to do the same. Otherwise? Who you are, how much you make, how much you sold out for, all of that? Not so much.

This is just an awful, terrible, bad idea. Instead of us old-timers saying "Dang site! Turning into Reddit!" Now we're going to actively start trying to copy Reddit? WTF?


In case it's not obvious from the juxtaposition of our two posts, I completely agree.

Having "tech famous" people on HN is great not because they're tech famous, but because they can provide the sorts of information that made them tech famous (as in, they're smart / knowledgeable). It's not important that they're famous, it's important that they can often provide insight into what we're talking about, because they were / are involved.

Reddit AMAs, when they're about a specific person (as opposed to a profession) seem to mostly be "You're awesome, I just wanted to ask, how did you get so awesome?" and variants.


>seem to mostly be "You're awesome, I just wanted to ask, how did you get so awesome?"

To be fair, that's why I come to HN instead of Reddit (which I NEVER visit). HN is an amazing site with many high quality posts - I think Reddit at the opposite end of the spectrum - because that's what it was when I last looked at it years ago.

A variant of this idea by the OP could work if it was handled correctly - for example, if Richard Branson was invited to talk about establishing successful corporate cultures. If there was an emphasis on a specific individual with a specific topic, then this could work.

Lastly, please don't turn HN into Reddit. I honestly believe this would kill the exact thing that makes this site unique.


Just create the AMA on http://reddit.com/r/hackernews and link to it from here. It keeps Reddit over on Reddit, but still provides interesting content for HN to link to.


Why this poll? I'm sure there'd be no problem if tomorrow morning we see "I'm #{@name}, founder of #{@awesome_thing}, AMA".


Some folks want HN to be sort of a super subreddit.


We already have a site for that, it's called Reddit. I get the impression that most HNers are also Redditors, so doing AMAs on Reddit makes more sense than trying to make HN into Reddit.


That was sort of the point, except that it doesn't stop people from wanting a higher level of discourse/participant on Reddit or more Reddit features on HN.


If anything I its 50/50 (overlap/strictly-HN), and I think that's being generous.


I'd imagine the main reason is just to promote the idea so people with connections might ask their connections to do an AMA.


This doesn't make sense to me.

First, I'm not sure there's anything stopping people from doing this now. Can't a person submit an "AMA-style" HN article already?

And on the end user side, if a person is interested in AMA-style posts, can't they just go to Reddit? What's the point of "me too" HN AMAs when Reddit's already doing a good job of it.


Was Reddit's AMA feature a result of paving the cowpaths?

I'm thinking of it as something that organically sprouted from the community, and then became an institution. Kinda like hashtags and @-mentions on twitter.

If people post AMA submissions on Hacker News and they do well, great. That's a sign the users would like more of it. Or are these being actively discouraged by admins (e.g. by editing “AMA” out of titles)?


Yes. At first the appeal of the AMA was the insight it provided into the lives of other redditors who just happened to have an interesting job or experience. It was only after it became "a thing" organically that it started to become a PR tool for celebrities and politicians--a direction that sadly seems to be accelerating.


AMAs where just post on /r/AskReddit for a long time until starting to grow on its own and becoming what it is now.


I don't think HN's comment voting/sorting algorithm is up for AMA style discussions. So often a single top-level reply dominates the discussion.

Actually, the sorting part is probably fine. It's hard to judge, anyway.

But for an AMA, it's not as much the sorting, but also the interface: Check any random AMA thread on Reddit and try to imagine what it would look like without all the "load more comments" links. Also try to imagine how differently the discussion would flow with all threads and replies completely unfolded.

It's a complex and interdependent balance, that, I think, the way it is handled on HN isn't particularly suited for AMA style discussion. The most interesting questions need to float to the top. But without comment folding, the two or three most interesting questions will gather a vibrant discussion and replies, causing many people to not even get past them, and the other questions won't get sorted properly because so much less people vote on them.

But, why not get the best of both worlds? Get an interesting person to do an AMA on Reddit, then invite HN to come along for the discussion? For those worried about the quality of discussion, my experience is that the more "grown up" a topic is, the more "grown up" replies you will get (and childish ones voted down), so if you get someone that's big in start-up land, you'd get a good discussion just fine, unlike what you'd get with a pop-star/TV-personality.


Slashdot Answers are superior to Reddit's AMA.

Slashdot solicits questions, people vote, guest is asked to answer the top 10. Quite rewarding.

Reddit AMAs feel like drive bys. Guests select a few questions to answer. Very casual. Very low signal to noise.

Reddit AMAs are almost as content-free as Presidential debates in the USA.


As I write this, the Yes vote is clearly leading (~1350 v ~500) but the first page of comments are almost exclusively No.

If that's indicative of who we are - those engaging in discussion say No and those happier to just answer a poll question say Yes - then I definitely hope the end result is No.

Edit: FWIW, I've seen links to a few Reddit AMAs on the front page here, and clicked through to some as a result. There's no either/or discussion here - we already have both. I see no incentive to change this.


My take on this:

* Those that put in enough to just 'click' say yes.

* Those who want to participate in the conversation say 'no'.

To commit at least one logical fallacy: Those who would participate in the AMA intelligently say 'no'.


No, because HN doesn't have a good way to manage comments the way Reddit can. In Reddit, it's easy to close an entire thread if you're not interested in it, but HN natively does not have this facility. I've seen some hacks that allow this, but if it were available natively on HN, it would make perusing the comments a lot easier.


I dont think this will be added in the near future, so you might enjoy the HN enhancement suite: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bappiabcodbpphnojd...


What I would like to see (if we are having a meta conversation on HN) is a view for the "Show HN" posts (like the "Ask" link above). What I enjoy the most here are the posts where people show cool stuff they've done, and it would be nice to have a separate view just for those (when I don't feel like wading through articles covering the Tesla/NYT scandal or whatever is the melodrama of the week)


Have you checked out http://www.hnshowcase.com? While it's a separate site, they have a collection updated daily featuring Show HN posts.


The infinite scroll bothers me (an option to fallback to a text list would be nice) but otherwise this is basically what I've been looking for :)


From the HN guidelines:

> If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

I would suggest that if you do proceed with the AMA's that you amend the guidelines and remove that clause.


  user: jcroll
  created: 160 days ago
Sorry, I had to :)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink


We ran AMA's on Inbound.org over the last month and they were a terrific success from an engagement point of view. They unearth fascinating content.

Dharmesh Shah's probably was the best example of what an HN audience might have asked: http://www.inbound.org/discussion/view/hi-i-m-dharmesh-shah-...

I love this kind of open media, open interviewing. Sometimes "regular interviews" bring up your burnings questions, or something else you find really interesting, but the chance to talk to real experts about questions specific to your interests is pretty damn cool.


Here, I think it would end up more like "Argue with me about anything". Might still be fun though.


Maybe an "Discussion" section of HN and leave the main board for true "News"?


I'm an infrequent enough Reddit user that their odd argot and mile-long discussions about ponies are really a disincentive for me to read past the intro to an AMA. Using HN for topically relevant AMAs provide a welcome relief from Reddit's tiresome fractals of inane comments.


The trick is to set reddit preferences to only show comments rated 10 or higher. That'll cut down on most of the garbage, though you'll still get a lot of highly rated "funny" posts. But you can just minimize a thread once it starts devolving into nonsense.


As long as we don't get a daily AMA for every single startup founder out there ... Reddit already has quite a few of those amadverts.


There is a website for this. It is Quora. The people who are famous and great tech people pick the questions they want to answer. A specific thread dedicated to the person is a bad idea and draws unwanted users. Letting these people pick which threads they want to respond to is the way to do it, which is something HN/Reddit/and Quora are setup for.


No, I like how HN works right now.

I'm here. That's like me saying "Hi, I'm jgrahamc, AMA"


Since this seems to be a meta discussion about the goings on of HN now, I just wanted to thank you, a month or so ago you gave me some positive criticism on the entropy behind my companies password protection scheme - since then it has been completely rehashed.


Ask me anything VS discuss the topic at hand leads to two very different discussions.

In an AMA the point would be for us to ask you questions, whereas if I started asking you questions here most would probably be deemed off-topic.


In all fairness, shouldn't this be something to ask pg about instead of a poll?


I think the OP realises pg would not go for this easily, so by making a poll that's a ahem run away success the OP hopes to present pg with evidence.


There is something natural about HN. Something in the way that it has grown, slow and organically.

I can not imagine that a handful of threads started by celebrities would increase the value of HN significantly.

But I could see a handful of celebrity threads bringing in large groups of new users, which I think could threaten the community's standards of comment quality.

I've never successfully grown a community, but my personal theory is start with a quality base, and slowly trickle in new users so that they are able to naturally recognize the expectations of the community through existing comments. If you have a big influx of new users, you have a big influx of new comments with no understanding of what a good comment is.


No. AMAs perpetuate the idea that the people who move the earth are normally unapproachable.


I think the benefit would be that people will ask more in-depth subject questions rather than "getting-to-know-you" type questions (to which we would get answers too short to satisfy).

I think HN has become increasingly focused on people rather than ideas and this would exacerbate the problem. IMO this should be news FOR hackers, not news ABOUT hackers.

AMAs would also largely be posted by people with a self-promotional interest (for the benefit of either themselves or their company) and upvoted by their voterings. Reddit AMAs seem like much more of a favor to the audience in comparison.


Bigger problem at hand: too much non-technology related articles are being posted on Hacker News.


It's not just "non technology" it's "non technology" AND "non useful startup / business" stuff. To me, those areas, and - most importantly - the intersection of those two areas, are the best part of HN. But articles that veer off into mainstream politics, and some of the vapid "startup lite" entreporn that get posted, seem to be rising in frequency here.

Or maybe it's just that my tastes have changed, but it does seem to me that things are already starting to get somewhat watered down. Given that, I think I should have voted "no" on this poll (I voted "maybe" because I wasn't really sure at first).


I know timing has a lot to do with number of upvotes, but I posted an off-topic[1] article that got 59 votes and over 100 comments (and, thankfully, was heavily flagged); and I posted an on-topic article that got 4 votes and no comments.

It's easy to see why bad articles get posted.

[1] I was under the influence of Zopiclone!


I agree. The articles on intellectual property and patent law seem to have paved the way for off-topic political articles.


Nobody will believe me, but I just came to post this. Experienced programmers have so much to offer to young programmers.

I even came up with a name for it - progrAMA


Yes, I think people on Hacker News might benefit from "Hacker News"-style AMA posts from technologists and investors.

The technologists and investors needn't be so high-profile. Reddit's Bill Gates AMA was great. And I'd also like to hear from smaller-profile founders, investors, developers involved in open source projects, and other like-minded hackers, if they'd be willing to be asked anything.


I'd rather focus on ideas than personalities. What about "ask me anything about X", where X is a software package/device/publication/etc.


As in [show hn]?


I've been reading HN for years and registered just so that I could vote "no".

My "no" is somewhere between "no megaphone" and "no naval-gazing". The community has always been more interesting for its own commentary than for the topic at hand, and making this a blog platform for others doesn't really fit with that.


I'm not sure you could do better than what Andrew Warner has done with http://mixergy.com

I know a lot of the older ones are behind a paywall now but there are 100s of interesting folks he has interviewed over the last few years.

Edit: Over 800 interviews. Truly impressive.


HN's karma system already makes reputation often more important than the actual message. I think an HN AMA would strengthen this, so I'd suggest to stick to good contents and not focussing to much on the author's identity (since the best contributions come from anonymous accounts).


Yes, but they must be actual technologists. I don't want to hear from start-up business people.


Yes, so long as it includes people like:

Hal Abelson, Peter Norvig, Tim Berners-Lee, Fred Brooks, Vinton Cerf, John Cormack, Brendsn Eich, Doug Engelbart, Alan Kay, Daniel P. Friedman, Richard P. Gabriel, jwz, Dan Ingalls, C.A.R. Hoare, Bill Joy,

etc. etc. etc.


William Shatner had an interesting comment on Reddit when asked about doing an AMA.

Basically he said he'd rather hang out and naturally interact with the audience rather than do a hit and run AMA for an hour then never come back.


AmA on HN will be more effective as people on reditt, do tend to troll around on some questions. That said, it would be better to have a collaboration with reditt to allow general users to join in as well.


There's a lot of work and coordination (scheduling, moderation, proof) involved in the IAMA subreddit. I'm not sure we are interested in or capable of organizing all of that here.

Also reddit has a much wider audience. Having IAMA's here instead of reddit would only make sense for less widely known tech-centric folks.

Also keep in mind that there have been a couple sites (startups?) that tried to replicate the reddit IAMA format and basically they all went nowhere.

This is one thing reddit is pretty good at, that is hard to replicate, and that there is not much of a reason to replicate here.


HN is more about topic, not personality.

I like Bill Shatner just fine, but I think we should leave him to Reddit. (Unless he shows up here on his own... Doing any startups, Bill?)

I prefer it the way it is, when something will be posted and suddenly founder or community leader(s) X will pop up with a comment:

Additionally... | I remember when... | We're excited... | Hey, didn't expect this... | "Under construction"... | It's coming... | The dog ate my homework, and two days later...

Followed by 'I/We'll be around for awhile [on this thread], in case any of you have questions or feedback.'


One of the most fun and interesting parts of participating in YC were the weekly dinners w/ guest speakers.

Perhaps something similar might be appropriate, i.e. a weekly IAmA related to start-ups / hacker culture.


Whenever there's an AMA on reddit from someone interesting, the scum floats to the top. Occasionally, you get something interesting but most of the time the AMAs are vapid. When a politician does an AMA, people upvote questions about weed or posts complaining that the US is a police state. When Paul Krugman did an AMA, libertarians raided the thread, downvoted all of the other questions, and upvoted stupid shit like questions about the legitimacy of Austrian economics.


Should this community worry about attracting the wrong crowd?

If everyone and their moms start getting attracted to this site then could that not start reducing the voting power of people who are actually interested in technology?

Listen, the only thing I'm trying to do is prevent this community from turning into Cats and Porn like reddit has become.

Lots of well known people participate in the discussion and will answer questions if you ask them.

Maybe HN needs better searching and filtering capabilities first.


An AMA with people like these would be awesome! I wonder if we could get them into a forum where anyone from HN (and anyone who happens by) could ask them anything.

We could set up a whole site aimed at it. Maybe we could call it reddit.com/r/IAmA ????

It would be the perfect place for anyone from HN to ask these people questions!

(Seriously: why? If you want to ask these people questions, just ask them on Reddit. Unless you can offer a better experience or audience, there's no win here.)


I voted No. I think it would be a distraction, although you could probably find willing candidates.

Hacker News is not as large as Reddit, and I think it's more useful to have everyone on a more or less equal level.

It's a simple community for technical and technology news matters. We have an Ask feature, but I also wouldn't recommend instituting a system similar to StackOverflow (even though we probably have a higher average level of technical ability on HN).


Well, the only way for that to work thematically is if the person is in fact a hacker. I use a pretty broad interpretation which would include Bill Gates but probably leave out Steven Levitt unless he was going to discuss/share the software tools he uses to arrive at his results. Also, more physical hackers like Adrian Bowyer of RepRap and some of the guys behind the Hacklabs and Hackerspaces.


I was recently wondering if "Moronic Mondays" (as featured in /r/Android and such) would be useful here. It's a good way to shed your ego and say "I have a question that I know seems stupid and simple, but I just can't wrap my head around it". Coincidentally, I implemented the IAmA star verification system years ago which seemed to popularize the entire IAmA community.


Yes, but leave the visionaries and successful entrepreneurs the door. I want to hear from engineers and creative people who've built something interesting and really get a chance to ask them about the nitty gritty of it. HN comments often become more interesting that the topic linked, directing that discussion isn't a bad thing at all.


No.

HN already has an equivalent in "Show HN". Show HN has the advantage of having some code / stack / tech / something to be discussed.


Why not leave AMAs where they belong, Reddit?

Call me a hipster, but I like the peace, quiet, and esotericism of HN. Adding AMAs would screw everything up; we'd get tons of new signups and the community would be diluted like Reddit is currently. We'd get immaturity in droves.

Memes on the HN front page... The thought makes me shudder.


I think the only case where I would like to see AMAs on HN would be AMAs by YC funded startup founders. I mean, that's what the site is ultimately about, networking and getting to know other startups and their people.

But AMAs from random (internet) celebrities can stay at Reddit. I see no reason to split them here.


AMAs are absolutely worthless. The POTUS did one on reddit and it was a dose of Valium for all involved.


As said earlier comments, I think that the best way for HN to operate is for those people to participate indirectly in the community (by commenting or submitting). Personally, I think its a more interesting way to learn and reveals a more genuine image of a person.


Yes! Not only technologists, but founders, CTO's, engineers at big companies, etc. etc.


No, because I don't think Hacker News needs to copy features from another community.


I voted no. HN doesn't bring the traffic that Reddit does. Let reddit do their thing. It's not like you can't participate in both communities. Like Daniel said above, let reddit be reddit, and hn be hn.


Something about the AMA format, at least on reddit, I have trouble finding the real "nuggets" of insight which I somehow expect. I think the threaded forum structure isn't so great for a freeform Q&A.


Only if there was some way to monitor the quality of the people doing AMA.


HN's borked 'more' link makes very large discussions very... difficult. I don't think this sort of post could work well on HN until that issue is fixed, regardless of if we think it is a good idea.


No, I don't think that sites like HN should be governed by poll results.


No.

Reddit works for this because there are enough dumb questions to answer. Most of HN is too complicated to stick to simple concepts like asking Bill Gates "How much money is in your wallet?"


It could be interesting, but I think Reddit is much better suited to multi-party discussions than HN. Reddit's commenting system is easier to navigate (cf. the hide button).


I don't see the point. Hacker News already has lots of interesting comments from technologists, and you can ask them anything (relevant) just by posting a reply.


One of the great parts of HN is the subdued conversation. It would be great to have say a Bill Gates AMA without the "Can you give me a million dollars" questions.


No, I read both Reddit and Hacker News, and would prefer AMAs to stay on Reddit where they have a much bigger audience.

Don't try and compete with Reddit, that ship has sailed.


I would really appreciate that because I am a senior in college and I'm trying to figure out where I want to go and what type of job would be best.


What question would you ask?


This isn't Reddit. If HN can't attract interesting characters for an extended stay then it has already failed, and we can go pack our bags.


Why? Hacker news can link to those discussions on reddit. As you said: There already are great AMAs on reddit and HN links to those.


I really like this idea but I'm not clear on how this would fit into the current UI. Reddit does threads a little better I feel.


No, you will be diluting your brand. Pick one thing to do and do it well. If you want AMA, head to Reddit. They already do that.


Hacker News should be made as simple as possible: one page of links only for hackers. (link to AMA is just another link)


I'd rather see HN move in the direction of Quora: High-quality questions that any notable technologist can answer.


Just keep reddit away from Hacker News. Reddit is a horrible place right now and there is no reason to copy it.


No, I feel that this website shouldn't follow reddit, but instead maybe try something diffrent


Great point, we should do something uniquely HN.


I think it's a good idea as long someone moderates (maybe PG) moderates who all can do it.


I wish HN had followable tags.


There already seems to be an informal policy of a permanent IamA PG AMA.


"I see the value of an AMA for someone who is never coming back here again but really, is an AMA for someone who is going to stick around necessary? I would much rather just do it more of a grass roots style. Answering things as I go along." - Will I Am Shatner


No. Keep Reddit on Reddit. No need for "Le Reddit Army" here.


Isn't there already enough hero worshiping on HN as it is?


No, thats what reddits for.


Don't talk about Fight Club


YES!


No, HN is not Reddit


Yes, if the persons doing the AMA's are of value.


not with the current comment system


Yes, but not in excess.


tricky bastard haha. this is the AMA!


Yes


Yes.


Yes.


No.


The idea sounds great, but there is a big caveat.

I think it will draw a lot of crowd to HN, which PG wouldn't like.

One one hand you need to keep the registrations open for newcomers to ask good questions, on the other hand a lot of signups will be from a section of Redditors not used to HN etiquette. I remember that signups are sometimes disabled on HN whenever there is a popular link to here from Reddit.

Also, HN has no means right now of highlighting the submitter of the post, unlike on Reddit.


I think signups are an interesting point. Nobody wants the site to be diluted too quickly and lose what makes it good, but I do think that a wider userbase would be a good thing for HN to stop it from being as much of an echo chamber as it often is.


A wider userbase only exacerbates the echo chamber, as the most popular, agreeable, easily consumed content rises to the top much faster.


Please, stop these polls. Nothing comes of them.


I like the idea of having AMAs here in HN.


I think you wanted the first option of the poll: "Yes"


Isn't that what Quora was made for? To have longer Q&A style discussions with other HNers and (legitimate) technology celebrities?

Edit: I guess the downvotes mean I'm wrong?


Quora is basically Experts Exchange 2.0. One of the biggest letdowns given the build-up and expectations it once had.


Quora is most definitely not for this, although it's a potential side effect. I'd argue it's actually the opposite: by design, Quora focuses on a single question open to answers by any number of users that do not have to be the question's target.


Ha. Quora's signin/signup wall is enough for me not to use it.


The modal signup wrapper? If I want to read the article, I'll pull it out with console.


I think the down votes mean (some) people really hate Quora. E.g. Recently: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5217052




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