Ask HN: Should we (the community) build an HN alternative?

11 pointsby albertogh14 anni fa2 comments

There are tons of interesting feature requests as well as incredibly needed bug fixes listed in the "features you'd like" thread at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363. IMHO and with all due respect, by now it's pretty clear that PG is not willing/able to address them, even the most glaring ones (cough unknown or expired link).

Having a community built, opensource alternative to HN would allow us to implement the features we want and could be a pretty fun experiment.

I know HN is itself opensource, but it's written in an obscure language and, as far as I know, does not accept 3rd party contributions, so it pretty much negates the main advantages of an opensource project.

This new project would be based on these principles, which (IMHO) HN fails to address:

- Opensource code, built using a mainstream language/framework, so contributing is not just easy, but actually encouraged.

- Community transparency: Everything is public, including upvotes and downvotes to stories and comments.

- Moderation transparency: Having moderators which modify the titles, etc… is fine and sometimes a must. You just have to show a log somewhere attached to the story where users can see which changes were made and by whom.

- Have a nice and complete REST API, so 3rd parties and mobile/desktop applications can properly interact with the site without resorting to hacks or scrapping.

I would gladly spend a week writing the MVP and opensourcing it, to kickstart the process. So, what does the HN community think about it?

3 comments

bdfh4214 anni fa

I don't see what issue you are addressing - or seeking to get support to address.

So what if there are a few feature requests mooted and (possible) bugs identified - would dealing with those issues get more and better items posted? Would the standard of debate improve? Would the community up and move to somewhere else if those little things that are niggling you were solved there?

borplk14 anni fa

I think it's a great idea. As much as I like the old-fashoined hacker style of HN. I think with a community filled with many who are spending days and nights making fanciest websites we deserve some fancy features ourselves. I don't mean visually as much as I mean in terms of useful features.

J3L240414 anni fa