Would anyone be interested in a Hacker News for biology?

Try to remain here. As a self appointed Em-Drive denier, I can ensure that the level of discussion in Physics and Math is sometimes not so high.

If the post has less than 20 or 30 comments, it is possible to reply to the interesting comments that are wrong or are asking for more information. Sometimes the article has big mistakes, and it is still possible to make a toplevel comment explaining the errors.

When the post already has 100 comment, usually the conversation derrailed and the main discussion is if it's possible to use an Em-Drive inside a Warp-Drive bubble to make a Start Treck teleporter, or something like that.

I'm not an specialist in Biology, so repliying in biologial threads is more difficult. Please ramian here and answer questions in your area of knowdledge.

I would love to see a site like HN but focused more on scientific discussion. The level of scientific literacy in the software startup community is definitely inconsistent and at times disappointing.

There are various science subreddits with large readerships but quality there is also mixed. Although you do see some high quality discussions.

I think you will have a challenge incentivizing high quality scientific discussion because the people with the acumen to have them are busy actually doing science.

The key to building a HN-type website is really the moderation. I seriously doubt that HN would be this successful without the hard work from dang et al.

If you get that down, I think that many people would be interested in a biology-focused HN-like site. Getting the right people to join is important, too. HN started out with some high-level folk, who set the tone for what this site is.

Good luck!

Yea let's do it. It would be cool to integrate discussions back into HN. Maybe a bio site could cross pollinate, as others called it, by submitting the stories to HN automatically and using HN for moderation and discussion. Then auto comment a link to expert discussion. This would improve discoverability.

The structure then could be just a news feed of important bio stories and there is expert discussion locally then you click and it links to HNs copy with discussion.

We now have sites for all manner of organic molecules, and methods of attaching them. This is an analog for the expansion of electronics at the dawn of the radio age - mid 20's which accompanied the global electronics growth of the 20th century. All manner of parts, tools etc were developed and sold in shops and via mail order. A similar molecular creativity phase dawned a few years ago and now you can acquire all these molecules and tools online and there is fierce competition. A regulatory overlay is now rising to limit the abilities of molecular terrorists like the Aum Shinrikyo of 1995 Sarin attacks. I think we are getting well into this phase now, with the online market replacing mail order. https://hacklab.to/ has a well equipped bio lab.

You would lose the cross pollination effect then

Sure, but only if you require commenters to provably have some kind of background in biology. I know that’s problematic for a number of reasons, but it’s just too much work to “fight the good fight” and explain why everyone is wrong on every single post.

This is the 2nd "Hacker News for X" post that I've seen today.

I think plenty of people would be happy to have a HN type platform for whatever their area of interest is, given it's moderated well and has a healthy, invested community.

Good luck with 1 and 1000x Good luck with 2.

Related "Ask HN: Alternatives to HN for non-Hacker News?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25318880

In general, the more, the better. https://lobste.rs/ and https://www.designernews.co/ are still active after several years, their community is just smaller.

I would love to see this! Pharma, Life Science and the hybrid between tech would be great.

Only if it doesn’t have politics.

Yeah, I would definitely like to see more HN-like sites for different fields.

Definitely a great idea. I would love to see this discussion here.

How would you make sure not to end up like Labrats subreddit?

This is roughly true for the difficulty of having an analytical community -

https://xkcd.com/435/

But that's also good because it hasn't be done yet and needs doing.

Yes, do it!

Yeah!