from Hacker News

Ask HN: Other communities like HN?

by espitia on 4/3/17, 2:54 AM with 60 comments

I am always impressed by the quality and depth of the commentary on HN. After having read the articles posted, I gain a lot of value by having my perspective challenged many times over in the comments.

As HN is focused on tech only, do you guys know of similar communities (quality of commentary/discussion) around the web that focuses on other niches?

  • by zacmps on 4/3/17, 3:48 AM

    Parts of reddit are good. They're probably the closest thing you'll find to HN though many here would have to admit it.

  • by emmelaich on 4/3/17, 4:41 AM

    If you're of a rationalist / philosophical bent you might like http://lesswrong.com

    "Less Wrong is a community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality."

  • by dotancohen on 4/3/17, 5:23 AM

    I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned /. yet.

    http://slashdot.org

    Chips&Dips, er Slashdot, was the original high-quality tech forum on the internet. In recent years it has gone to trash, but it is still the model community-driven tech news forum and occasionally has very good commentary.

  • by ctrlrsf on 4/3/17, 3:45 AM

    Investing advice inspired by Jack Bogle: https://www.bogleheads.org

  • by lolptdr on 4/3/17, 4:02 AM

    These Hacker News clones seem like good candidates for decent communities:

    http://www.datatau.com/news

    https://www.designernews.co/

  • by derrekl on 4/3/17, 5:08 AM

    For beer: https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/

    That links to the forums where you see some good discussion. Also the reviews of beer on the site are quite extensive.

  • by mooneater on 4/3/17, 4:43 AM

    https://feedit.agfunder.com/ for agriculture and food related technology and investment.

  • by sova on 4/3/17, 5:34 AM

    Full disclosure: this is a project I'm working on, and comment functionality is coming.

    Nonforum.com is for sustainable / resilient agriculture+composting+earthships, alternative lifestyles, personal experiences, and forward-minded things that would otherwise not really have a home on the 'net.

    There's a small write-up of things we are trying to foster at https://nonforum.com/about.html (or just click on the (non) logo card on the front page)

    Still pretty nascent, and I haven't submitted a show HN yet because there's no commenting functionality up yet. On the bright side, nonforum functions as a nice link-sharing platform, and votes and submissions show up in real-time (no page refresh required).

    Currently in semi-open beta (one needs an account to submit new links/write-ups and to vote on things), you can request an invite code by providing your e-mail, or, at the moment just asking me to send you one.

    https://nonforum.com/

  • by mendeza on 4/3/17, 5:44 AM

    Indie Hackers (https://www.indiehackers.com/) in my opinion is an up and coming badass community.

    Not much content on there, but the content thats there is nothing I have seen anywhere else

  • by ThrustVectoring on 4/3/17, 4:06 AM

    slatestarcodex has a great community following it and good moderation.

  • by luord on 4/3/17, 12:26 PM

    One I frequent is https://hashnode.com

    It's still not very big but seems to be growing. And it's completely bereft of political talk, which I find refreshing.

  • by paulshapiro on 4/3/17, 4:15 AM

    MetaFilter still kicks ass.

  • by notaplumber on 4/3/17, 4:02 AM

    There's https://lobste.rs/ it's invite-only to comment, but not hard to get.

  • by zerr on 4/3/17, 6:09 AM

    I wonder if there are similar sites but more bootstrappers oriented (rather than investors' pocket burners).

  • by BadassFractal on 4/3/17, 5:24 AM

    I've had a very conflicted experience with SomethingAwful in the past. Parts of it feel like a quality and tight community, others are just endless shitposts. They might have severely dipped in activity as well over the past few years.

  • by kumarski on 4/3/17, 4:28 AM

    I've built several fb groups I built from the ground up, but cap membership at 200 members.

    Still want to build out cronofy.com integration to help members connect/meetup in person.

  • by kriro on 4/3/17, 6:00 AM

    For (online)poker there's forumserver.twoplustwo.com

  • by evolve2k on 4/3/17, 5:17 PM

    http://designernews.co for well, Designer News.

  • by Harkins on 4/3/17, 2:04 PM

    This site isn't only focused on tech, there's also a lot of tech entrepreneurship - particularly the VC-funded Bay Area variety, and also a bit of gossip about that community.

    For tech, https://lobste.rs is decent. There's more interest in papers and proofs-of-concept than here. (Give a link to your profile on Twitter/GitHub/here in #lobsters on Freenode and someone will give an invite pretty quickly.)

    For bootstrapped entrepreneurship, https://barnacl.es (my site) is small but welcoming and growing. (No invite needed.)

  • by skdotdan on 4/3/17, 5:31 AM

    Reddit. For instance, the programming subreddit.

  • by tschellenbach on 4/3/17, 4:21 AM

    My favorite is Lobsters: lobste.rs

  • by frgtpsswrdlame on 4/3/17, 3:49 AM

    metafilter.com is a good general/link-aggregatey site. It's got a strong "SJW" contingent though, so take that into account.