Sites with the quality of Hacker News, but for more general topics?

In 2010 I felt at home on Reddit. I felt like a had an entire world to lose myself in. But now Reddit is hollow and glazed over with mindless political dogma and petty drama. Maybe I’m just getting older too and not really impressed by internet videos.

I remember r/no sleep being this incredible wellspring of enthusiasm and creativity. I remember people raving about Dr who. Can you imagine Dr who being on half the front page now? Reddit was such an important part of my life back then. I feel so lonely without that community. But for years Reddit was dead and I found a new home on HN. Sadly the same thing has happened here. I remember one day a while ago someone submitted a videogamedunkey video and it was sustained on the front page… on HN. That was the day that it truly sank in for me. And in the pst year I have felt so lonely because the internet is just dead…the average person on the sidewalk and the average person on the internet are now literally the same.

The internet isn’t novel anymore. Reddit hive mind isn’t novel anymore. I think the difference between then and now is that people used to upvote, submit and comment with true passion because everything was new and novel and people felt like it was worth the time and energy to take part in something exciting and new. But now it’s all very tired and people are sobered up. Only low effort interaction survives. The pathways of engagement have been well beaten and so everything seems to be the same. No comment is original. These forums have the same deterministic malaise as the rest of the world.

What can be done about this? I would say the only answer is to withdraw into your work and reading because nobody of quality really takes part in Internet forums anymore.

Used to be a part of forums when those were a thing, which they aren’t anymore.

Today, Hacker News is literally the only site I read the comments on. And I find myself reading the comments more than the submissions.

Maybe there are discords that are good, but I haven’t found any yet and I find that app unpleasant to use

I assume you've tried Reddit except smaller subs, particularly those that ban image posts? The political content and extremely polarised opinions drop away quickly the more niche you get.

https://www.lesswrong.com/, still tech focused but there are broader topics discussed. Also great for longform pieces.

https://www.bogleheads.org for personal finance and investment advice. Both the wiki and forum are excellent.

Read Something Interesting [0] (and its newsletter form Thinking About Things [1]) are great for classic general blog posts.

[0] https://readsomethinginteresting.com

[1] https://thinking-about-things.com

If there isn't something like that - maybe we should build it?

https://arstechnica.com

Still very nerdy, but less startup- / CS-focused

The pre-acquisition version of digg.com had many similar characteristics. The current version, sadly, does not.

I've improved the quality of my Reddit experience significantly by:

- Unsubscribing from all default subreddits (which are mostly time wasters),

- Not subscribing to any subreddits (so that I don't have a front page),

- Using the multireddit feature to create groups of subreddits I like, and

- Using old.reddit.com which emphasizes the text experience more

I'd love there to be one for broader science. HN serves well, but can be hit and miss in the comments depending on the field and it's degrees of seperation from computer science.

More technical topics end up sinking quick without much discourse. This is in contrast to technical computer science items that do the opposite

The comments here are just as mediocre and repetitive as Reddit, just written in a way to sound more sophisticated

https://3quarksdaily.com/ is pretty good, although the volume can be a bit overwhelming.

There are many... But these communities are typically not advertised as such. Generally, you would be invited or referred to by another member.

How did you discover HN?

I came across this 'hacker news as a service' site whilst browsing beta list. Will be interesting to see if it takes off. I'm half tempted to start a Spanish language hacker news just so I can find cool content to practice my Spanish with

https://www.hn.plus/?ref=betalist

That site is basically reddit but just sorting the comments based on scores.

Or searching for a Twitter thread about the topic with a ?

multiple topics, discussed by people who are highly interested in them? Tried 4chan?

In all seriousness, reddit has been declining for years, and I've yet to find anything that scratches the same itch.

I run a website/forum. Probably not as popular as HN but for New Zealand it is a good size. Won't drop link here unless someone asks/says is OK.

Not necessary. Separation of concerns is nice. Sometimes, the combination will make you feel messy.

I also recommend other commenters' suggestions of lesswrong.com , bogleheads.org/forum , and metafilter.com

Another that hasn't been mentioned is datasecretslox.com , similar to lesswrong.com and themotte.org in it's rationalist / SlateStarCodex / AstralCodexTen / Scott Alexander background.

In the same vein, any other site that focuses more explicitly on CS only? HN is irreplaceable on that count, you really get sometimes the very creator of the thing chine in, but there are sometimes almost a week going by without any “proper” CS-content (I follow basically every “front page” submission through RSS). https://lobste.rs/ comes to mind, but it has very few comments unfortunately. Maybe a tag system could be great, at least this crude.

Oh, and while we are at it, could we list some tech forums for other languages? I spend way too much time lurking around tech forums, and being forced to use another language might make me actually learn it (German in my case).

TheMotte.org has good discussion, few links.

Lobste.rs has lots of links, less discussion.

It’s really really hard to find sites like this.

You might want to try Metafilter. It’s quite nice. https://www.metafilter.com/