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Ask HN: HN is gone, now what?

In a hypothetical scenario where HN would disappear for whatever reason more or less permanently, what alternatives would there be? Where someone could find similar quality of commenters?
( 58 comments | 41 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by h2odragon on Friday July 08, 2022 @07:39PM (#32029436)
The replacement*s* would not arise until after the original died; if that was a sudden and final thing then they'd pop up quickly and try to transplant the community as a first focus. If it changes more subtly then there's a long process of new communities growing and nothing quite like the original ever happens again.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by yogthos on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:48PM (#32030131)
Set up a [Lemmy](https://github.com/LemmyNet) instance.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by another_story on Friday July 08, 2022 @09:11PM (#32030240)
They still have the hard-coded "slur" filter?
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by gurchik on Friday July 08, 2022 @09:47PM (#32030507)
No, it's completely configurable

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1773

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by another_story on Sunday July 10, 2022 @12:03AM (#32041733)
That's good. I remember reading years ago how they weren't going to remove it. Glad they left it up the server admins to make the call for their communities.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by Amfy on Friday July 08, 2022 @07:37PM (#32029414)
great question. following.

maybe bring good old'school forums back. man, i miss those times.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by aaaaaaaaata on Saturday July 09, 2022 @07:25AM (#32033978)
Nobody's really built a new one in a while.

One with a strong, mostly fresh take on mobile access would be super interesting.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by solardev on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:36PM (#32030028)
I've found an amazing community (generally not techy though) at boards.straightdope.com. Some smart folks and interesting topics from all sectors of life.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by hsbauauvhabzb on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:01PM (#32029712)
I started on digg, hackaday and slashdot, before moving here when those services crumbled (afaict had is still going strong, my interests changed a bit though!

I think if yc fell, communities may segregate a bit into different interest groups.

I’m sure there’s a few yc quality subreddit’s also, If you can stand the user hostile ux

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by ehhhhhhhhh on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:27PM (#32029949)
This is similar to my experience. Slashdot, digg, reddit, then HN. HN hasn't really declined (I think I matured) but I still find some nuggets.

I'd like to see a group like early $PLACE on something like IPFS or whatever to keep the bar high enough.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by LordDragonfang on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:40PM (#32030060)
>If you can stand the user hostile ux

old.reddit.com is still available, which is only slightly user hostile. There's a setting to default to it if you're logged in, otherwise it's pretty trivial to either install an extension or write a userscript to automatically redirect you to that subdomain.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by brigandish on Saturday July 09, 2022 @08:46AM (#32034556)
There's also Teddit[1], which I use most of the time I want to look at Reddit now. It's been discussed on HN before[2].

[1] https://teddit.net/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25310206

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by FractalHQ on Saturday July 09, 2022 @02:04PM (#32037704)
That is one of the slowest websites I’ve ever tried to use! Too bad to, because it’s a great idea.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by Markoff on Saturday July 09, 2022 @02:23AM (#32032406)
what would be those subs?

at least on mobile you can use Boost or Sync, but on desktop it's more difficult, really only old.reddit.com and experience is vastly inferior to mobile apps

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by dopa42365 on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:49PM (#32030146)
become a /g/entleman
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by unraveller on Friday July 08, 2022 @11:14PM (#32031200)
make orange site good again
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by vorpalhex on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:39PM (#32030057)
Libera.chat since I assume most of HN is also on IRC
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by dan-robertson on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:43PM (#32030089)
I would be surprised if that were the case
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by tomjen3 on Saturday July 09, 2022 @02:18AM (#32032384)
IRC is pretty terrible. No logs, no persistant names, no way to catch up but to spend hours looking at text.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by gaws on Saturday July 09, 2022 @01:57PM (#32037637)
> No logs, no persistant names, no way to catch up but to spend hours looking at text.

A bouncer solves these issues.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by BayAreaEscapee on Friday July 08, 2022 @07:53PM (#32029606)
Woohoo! I just got back an hour of time every day, just as if a day had 25 hours instead of 24.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by dorkwood on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:25PM (#32029936)
I think the hours I spend here go towards satisfying my need to feel part of a community. Without it, I suspect I'd spend the same amount of time on another social media site.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by dandanio on Sunday July 10, 2022 @07:53AM (#32043850)
Maybe start an NNTP server?
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by slater on Friday July 08, 2022 @07:38PM (#32029430)
lobste.rs
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by romellem on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:40PM (#32030059)
Interesting, I haven’t heard of this before. It seems like to create an account to you an invite?
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by glouwbug on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:46PM (#32030120)
You can ask around, I'm sure someone will be kind enough to send you one. I've personally never received one but I would like one
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by kayodelycaon on Friday July 08, 2022 @09:27PM (#32030354)
One issue with lobste.rs invites is they are a mechanism to vouch for a person. Whoever invited you will show up in your public profile. So there’s a reputation risk if you invite who later gets a lot of negative attention. (Which is why I’ve yet to invite anyone.)

Edit: Here is the text for that.

Invitations are unlimited, but persons you invite will be associated with your account in the user tree and you may be responsible for them if they cause problems. Please use your discretion when inviting persons you don't personally know.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by glouwbug on Friday July 08, 2022 @11:10PM (#32031172)
Guess I wouldn't want to be responsible for an internet stranger's defamation. I'll keep shit posting on HN
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by gysfjiutedgj on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:22PM (#32029914)
squid blog
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by arthurcolle on Friday July 08, 2022 @07:47PM (#32029534)
lobste.rs
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by vyrotek on Friday July 08, 2022 @10:18PM (#32030735)
Looks great. Would love an invite.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by Jaruzel on Saturday July 09, 2022 @03:18AM (#32032686)
I can invite you, let me know if you want me to?
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by vyrotek on Sunday July 10, 2022 @01:43AM (#32042165)
Thanks, managed to get one.

By the way, your Amiga collection is amazing. My dad and I play with his collection once in a while. So many great games!

https://twitter.com/vyrotek/status/1479932078267396100

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by arthurcolle on Saturday July 09, 2022 @03:09PM (#32038292)
I gotchu, send me an email or something, you can find it on my profile: https://lobste.rs/u/arthurcolle
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by vyrotek on Sunday July 10, 2022 @01:39AM (#32042151)
Thank you! Accepted.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by Markoff on Saturday July 09, 2022 @02:25AM (#32032413)
seems entirely focused on devs as if people didn't work in other tech fields
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by thiht on Saturday July 09, 2022 @04:51AM (#32033185)
Can’t we have a community just for devs?
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by Markoff on Sunday July 10, 2022 @02:30AM (#32042347)
sure you can, but don't claim it's alternative to HN
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by thiht on Sunday July 10, 2022 @03:49AM (#32042680)
Depending on how you use HN, it can be. Some people are here for the technical topics.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by Markoff on Sunday July 10, 2022 @06:29AM (#32043432)
yes and for those people lobsters ain't HN alternative, because it's narrowly focused on developing/coding, not general technical topics
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by dlisboa on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:09PM (#32029782)
Lobste.rs. It's much more focused on tech/programming and the discussions there (although very few comments) often lead me to discovering new things.

Although that part of it also sucks a bit because you can't comment if you're not an invited member (which I'm not).

Many of the articles are found on HN first, but some are easier to see there because the front-page doesn't change as much as HN.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by h4waii on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:12PM (#32029821)
Drop an email in your HN profile, I'm sure someone will send you an invite.

I find the quantity of comments on lobste.rs to be lacking compared to HN, they are much higher quality but there's not a lot of discussion for some reason.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by jart on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:50PM (#32030155)
I think part of it is Lobsters has an "average karma per comment / post" feature which means Lobsters users usually don't post a lot of "wow!" or "thank you!" comments and instead prefer to speak up when they feel something substantive is meriting attention. I've posted threads there that were #1 for a day and got like two comments. I've seen other smaller threads I've posted explode with comments when, for instance, there was a weakness in my project's design. It makes Lobsters a hard crowd to please, although the important thing to understand is they actually still love you. The website design just has different incentives for discussion.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by jorvi on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:49PM (#32030138)
> but there's not a lot of discussion for some reason

I mean... this is directly related to accounts being invite only.

It's a bit of a catch-22, the less friction to comment, the lower the quality but the higher the quantity.

Generally (let me preface: I do like HN as a whole) I dislike vote based or algorithmically driven discussion platforms. Vote based eventually ends up with the site having a certain inherent 'culture', and any comment not fitting in will at most get mildly upvoted and usually just ends up downvoted and collapsed / greyed out. Algorithmically driven, the engagement factor eventually just crowds out any other metric for valuing comments.

I like the setup of image boards (discussion boards?) the most. By default, everyone comments anonymously. Votes don't exist. There is no way to gain reputation points. Your post or comment stands on its own merit. Boring or (most) bait interaction get ignored whilst high quality interaction gets bumped to the front page more often. (Don't let 4Chan's two most infamous boards color your opinion for most other boards)

My personal perfect platform would be the imageboard way for content valuation and Reddit's old UI / UX.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by ShamelessC on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:26PM (#32029947)
Funny to see a complaint about comment quality when your comment is effectively a restatement of what parent comment said.

Not trying to be rude of course, I do this myself occasionally (my editing skills are bad on mobile in particular), but to me it’s obvious that fewer comments increases the signal-to-noise ratio.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by mod on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:41PM (#32030075)
I consider your critique of the comment entirely invalid, given that he didn't complain about quality, he complained about quantity.

He complimented the quality.

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by ShamelessC on Friday July 08, 2022 @09:16PM (#32030269)
Ah! See what I’m saying? Humans are poor commenters, can’t escape it.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by h4waii on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:36PM (#32030029)
Indeed the irony is not lost on me, but main purpose was to get a way for invites to be sent those who want 'em.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by dlisboa on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:27PM (#32029954)
Hmm, just did that, thanks. Been a while since I last saw my profile here, didn't realize I didn't have anything on it.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by SaulJLH on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:52PM (#32030175)
Can I haz invite too, please?!?
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by htk on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:27PM (#32029958)
I would also welcome an invite to lobste.rs if anyone is able and willing to send me one. My contact is in my profile.

Thanks!

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by thiht on Saturday July 09, 2022 @05:15AM (#32033301)
Just sent you one, enjoy!
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by htk on Saturday July 09, 2022 @07:08AM (#32033884)
Excellent, thank you!
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by 1123581321 on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:22PM (#32029908)
Lobste.rs would probably further restrict invitations to protect against a flood of new users.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by waynesonfire on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:39PM (#32030051)
artificial scarcity, classic marketing scheme. i'd move along.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by 1123581321 on Friday July 08, 2022 @09:59PM (#32030582)
I know what you mean, but I think many of their users really would prefer the site be ignored by most of the Internet.
Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by amelius on Friday July 08, 2022 @08:35PM (#32030014)
> Lobste.rs

Isn't that for Rust users only?

Re:Ask HN: HN is gone, now what? by slater on Friday July 08, 2022 @11:22PM (#32031261)
Actually only for people currently living in Serbia.