Ask HN: What intelligent forums exist outside of HN? Twitter has long been declining, and Reddit has recently seemed to get much worse for me. Blind is just for bragging about your salary and making insensitive comments about race and sex. HN is great, but I’m interested in more than just tech and tech people. Any recommendations? |
Discoverability is a problem, but you follow people on your home server, follow the people they boost, see who they follow and follow them ...
Then cull ruthlessly.
Repeat a few times and quite quickly you find your personal feed full of things from interesting people.
If you don't have "algorithms" to suggest things to you, you need to do the work for yourself. Thing is, it takes some effort.
That's another thing. Most of the people active on Mastodon have done, or are doing, that work, which is a positive filter.
Once you've found some people you like, this tool is somewhat helpful for finding more people you might like to follow:
Having said that, I invite you to read this essay:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yoursel...
I found that it expressed eloquently reservations of my own that I had been unable to put into words.
* https://wilwheaton.net/2024/11/nothing-but-bluesky-is-such-a...
For people who build connections and create content, I advise most strongly that they prepare from day one for having to move. Create your content elsewhere and then copy it to BS, keep a separate record of people you want to stay in touch with. Do not rely on a platform like BS for keeping anything.
The article exactly captures why I am using Mastodon-the-Platform and not BS. If I do put things on BS, I will be prepared to lose them, and connections.
But each person has their own reasons for using any of these platforms. I'm getting great technical content, mathematical content, connections, and conversations on Mathstodon.
PS: For the avoidance of doubt: mathstodon.xyz (carefully note the spelling) is one instance of Mastodon-the-Platform.
PPS: Again, I totally get why people are choosing other platforms, and this is not a criticism. It purely an explanation of my reasoning.
I forgot to mention that ... thanks. The ability to follow hashtags is excellent.
Basically you have to curate your own feed. The platform should provide me with tools and features to do that effectively. Instead they keep trying to improve the algorithm.
This is a Dutch forum for Dairy Farmers. It's at the root of a lot of innovations: https://www.prikkebord.nl
This is a Dutch forum for tractor enthusiasts. The people there are very helpful and you can basically restore a tractor as a newbie with their help: https://www.tractorfan.nl
Even though these seem like very specific niches, both websites have tens of thousands of daily visitors.
"All the things personal finance" basically
MMM's forum is also a classic. I don't read it regularly these days, but it definitely gets a read once every month or so. Still surprisingly active and I've found some really good lifestyle financial advice there, as opposed to the more number based info I get from Bogleheads. I just enjoy the idea of a forum filled with Mustachian ideology.
Ask HN: Sites like HN on other topics?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37611708
Ask HN: What are some communities like HN?
No recommendations. But can you articulate what you might be looking for? ( certainly not easy to answer f you have not spend time thinking)
I realize this doesn’t help you, but maybe it helps you understand why the request may have been vague?
YMMV.
i don't see much difference versus here
I've tried many but most don't have enough interesting traffic to keep you coming back.
bsky dot app is taking up more of my time, one of my tech interests, kicad, posts there a lot.
Or any Eastern European language programming forums. In general I believe they are excellent software engineers.
There's a similar one about russian "startups" https://vc.ru/popular/month
Why do you think so?
But then eventually Facebook is just a stream of ads and slop with no activity from friends.. And then you wonder why you're even there.
Twitter is clearly executing the same playbook.
Ads. Sidebars. Political rants. Threadbois. Engagement bait.
No more APIs. Can’t easily export your data. Your likes. Your bookmarks.
It’s overridden with engagement bots that perform post, reply, and follow campaigns. AI posters and commenters.
And not the worst: but it’s likely nobody will read your posts, even if you have Premium, unless you game the algorithm and boost your standings. This requires you to act like an influencer.
Claiming that the platform is exactly the same as it's always been and then pointing out one substantial change from the way it's always been, is an insane degree of cognitive dissonance.
"Surface"? At least we agree on the censoring because before it was only left-wing extremism.
Not sure what point you are making?
And the "left-wing content" some people find offensive is anything as banal as the mere existence of non-white characters in media, or the use of pronouns, or any number of entirely minor triggers most people don't care about. This simply isn't in the "same but opposite" category as open racism, misogyny and hate speech to most people, when simply not being a nazi counts as "left-wing" in modern parlance.