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Are there other good aggregator sites?
Tildes and Hacker News are my go to sites for general conversation, and information and I find being largely text based is what keeps the quality of the sites from devolving. Are there other similar sites?
I find discussion on Hacker News to be largely atrocious. (ex. from today: Hacker News complains that leftist expresses leftist views on personal blog) So my recommendations may not be what you are looking for.
I think lobste.rs is the closest thing to "Hacker News but reasonably moderated". The amount of discussion is lower - though I think a lot of this is that people only say things when they have things to say - but you have a whole lot less of the bullshit tolerated on the orange site. It is invite only a la Tildes.
Something Awful is apparently still good, according to my friends. I wouldn't know though, I'm not on there.
I find quite a lot of Mastodon instances to be well-moderated and of high quality. (Of course, there are also quite a lot that are not.) These are very much their own distinct communities despite all being part of the Fediverse and largely all on Mastodon. I don't really have any recommendations here, aside from if you do join Mastodon, to peruse the local timeline and moderation rules of an instance before joining.
I don't entirely disagree, HN definitely has a particular bent to it, but I find that an odd example. Most of the comments are pretty positive, apart from some near the bottom that have a go at the political aspect, which in turn have a bunch of other comments criticising them.
My experience is that there's definitely a fiscally conservative bent to the average HN commenter, and there are certain trigger topics that bring out certain groups (e.g. avoid anything involving universities), but mostly there's a fair amount of diversity in opinion. The bigger issue I find is more in how people express themselves - it can feel like quite a competitive kind of crowd, where people will chime in trying to prove you wrong rather than discuss the substance of what you're trying to say.
I think my biggest issue with hacker news is that 'attack mode' isn't dealt with. Too many posters all falling over themselves to be the first one to shit all over the new topic, and do it while cultivating the most longwinded, technobabble-ridden, ego-stroking, insufferable snark on the internet. I get the feeling everyone there is constantly trying to signal how much smarter they are than the average hackernews user, and the rest of the internet in general. I suspect that's just part of HN's makeup, even in the early days they cultivated the 'high brow' mentality. That has consequences long term for one's community norms.
That said it's still better on HN than most of the internet by a country mile. /shrug
It does remind me a lot of Reddit c. 2012 or so. There was always an edge to it (no matter you affiliation), but the site would generally do an okay enough job self filtering outright noise or snark.
For better or worse, some of that is upkept by some much more opaque forms of moderation. Like, the above thread is simply flagged (can be by enough users, can be from the mods. Who knows); it won't show up for a casual browser unless you have a specific setting enabled. Best way to prevent a flame war is to hide the fire, I suppose. Tons of other rules and mechanics unlisted that you can only find through asking around or finding the right places.
(aside: LMFAO THE TOPIC GOT FLAGGED)
I think I would disagree. There's more than a fiscally conservative bend to the average HN commentator, there's a socially conservative bend too, and there's also... what I can only really describe as mansplaining?
Avoid anything involving universities. Avoid anything involving history. Avoid anything involving politics. Avoid anything involving tech, if the people behind that tech so happen to be too queer. There's a reason quite a lot of bloggers - jwz, Xe Iaso, everyone at Asahi Linux, pretty much the entirety of Mastodon... - hold Hacker News in contempt, and it's more than just the tendency of people there trying to show off what they know or just looked up for internet points.
Especially if they're trans, or honestly even mention any hardship that trans people are facing.
Yeah I've seen good shit on Hacker News but I've seen a ton of absolutely regressive shit when it comes to women and LGBTQ issues, especially trans stuff. Gives me absolutely zero desire to interact with the site directly; Tildes users usually helpfully percolate the most interesting stuff over here anyway.
I will say, for Lobste.rs, it's far more focused on programming, operating systems, and very technical aspects of the field, not nearly as broad as HN, so if one is looking for the same topics as on HN, it won't fulfill that role
Metafilter is apparently quite good. I also think mastodon/fediverse in general can be quite good, especially if you are on a smallish instance related to your interests, where you can get to know people on the local tab. There are a few reddit-style forums, I think beehaw is one of the better-moderated ones, though n.b. I think one of the founders had some minor drama with Deimos, but is now active here again.
I believe at least three of the Beehaw founders have been banned from Tildes, temporarily or permanently. I was around for two of the bannings and considered them well deserved... and would not want to partake in a community run by any of them. But everyone has different standards for discussion, nor should care about really quite boring drama in what is now the fairly distant past.
That's not to necessarily discourage anyone from checking out Beehaw, more so provide some context. If you check it out and like it, that's cool, I'm sure they'd like to have you. The intent behind it seems positive.
I would encourage anyone to consider beehaw regardless of previous bad interactions between its founders and Tildes. The experience of managing a large community is likely to bring a better perspective, and people improve greatly all the time. I would suggest any Tildes user to judge beehaw on its own merits. I never really used the website, but I visit occasionally. Feels like a nice place, similar to Tildes in many ways.
Also worth mentioning just how long MeFi has been around. There are pages on there reacting to the towers being hit, and plenty of forum posts predating that, too. They're the oldest reputable forum imho.
How old is MeFi? When we were about to have our first child I posted a question on AskMeFi looking for ideas for interesting middle names. We loved one of the suggestions and ran with it. That kiddo—named in part by the MeFi community—just turned 19. :)
You got in early! AskMe just celebrated its 20th anniversary a few weeks ago. The site as a whole started in the summer of 1999.
Woah! That's super interesting.
I'll have to check when I get home, but I believe they've been open since
19981999, as another contributor said.I've been on there since 2020, and it seems to keep chugging along, steady as a rock.
(P.S. what's the middle name? I'd love to try and find the original askmefi thread for you.)
Here is the thread!
https://ask.metafilter.com/4466/What-is-a-good-name-for-our-daughter/amp
We chose a first name that never appeared in the thread, and a really unconventional suggestion from the discussion for the middle name. It was fun to revisit the discussion. Great idea to look up the original thread!
That's such a great story, thank you so much for sending the link! I'm glad it brought joy :)
I created an aggregator of links shared on Mastodon and Bluesky: https://linklonk.com/social
I posted details on how it works here: https://tildes.net/~comp/174p/what_programming_technical_projects_have_you_been_working_on#comment-8yu2
That looks pretty good! I've created a guest account to try it out.
Let me know if you have any ideas how to make it better. I recommend signing up with an email address - then you can subscribe to get the content recommendations as a newsletter.
Seconding Metafilter! I’ve been a long time member there (ever since Scott Adams’ sock puppet was outed!). It’s less tech oriented than tildes, and very well moderated.
It took me 3 minutes to find something very interesting. Great website!
https://www.sciencealert.com/decades-ago-a-huge-noise-roared-in-the-ocean-for-years-it-was-a-mystery
Awesome!
Metafilter is also interesting in that it costs $5 (one time) to sign up for an account to comment / post. It helps keep the spam at bay and also helps fund the moderation.
Don't tell anyone, but MetaFilter is where I often get my Tildes article submissions from. That, and Mozilla Pocket, a social bookmarking app/site. ;)
Pocket is fantastic, I've been using it since high school. Makes up for everything my Kindle can't.
There are browser extensions that will send pages from browser to the Kindle ;)
Oooh I'll have to try that, thanks a ton!
If you like reading; Readup
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