I'm generally in favor of adding ~tech and seeing how it goes. My fear with some of these subs though is that they might dominate the front page and dilute the bitcoin stuff but it might be time to start experimenting and we'll only know when we've launched it.
Yes it would be interesting to follow hardware developments related to bitcoin as DIY hardware wallets, or IOT, I really appreciate the work of Ben Arc on hardware devices, that are useful in everyday life....
But perhaps a better approach would be to open new subs for registration and moderation. With all this Reddit API Soap opera, reddit is on its way downward, and SN is definitely an upgrade.
Well, the site is still called Stacker News. I understand what you're saying, so if a sports or gardening sub was added,do you think the name of the site should be changed?
I think people should be able to stack sats while talking about sports or gardening. If the stacker news model works, then it shouldnt just be limited to bitcoin topics.
I never really understood this objection. Why can't the name be interpreted as news for stackers? We're clearly interested in all sorts of stuff. When I started using SN news, I didn't infer any sort of limitation on the topics from the name.
Hacker News was the model for this site. Would you find it unusual for people to discuss types of fishing lures there?
I do think the name of the site matters. We may disagree, but I think the name Stacker News does limit the logical discussion topics. I agree that those can range far afield of bitcoin, but it's still limited. For instance shitcoins, nostr, general tech and programming, economics and money. They all make sense as discussion topics here. I don't think everything does.
Maybe the name should be changed at some point, or, the code could be forked to encompass any topic.
Thanks for the link. I never saw the pitch deck before. That causes me to rethink my position. Two things:
Nostr struggles to break free of the bitcoin only trap, as fiatjaf has warned about. There, the name and structure doesn't even suggest a relationship to bitcoin, but bitcoin is the payment system.
Here, the name is Stacker News. The obvious implication is that the site focuses on news about stacking. It seems that quite a leap will have to be made at some point to have the topic reach of reddit, and it might require a name change.
The name isn't "Bitcoin News", though. "Stacker" describes the audience, but doesn't place any inherent limitation on what news we might be interested in. The site can have a highly selected audience without arbitrarily defining the scope of conversation.
I also don't think there should be a goal of emulating Reddit's breadth. Rather, I think the goal should be to make SN as rewarding as possible for those of us who love coming here. The quality of interaction is really high here and it would be a shame to reduce the scope of those interactions.
That just seems like extra work to me, for no clear benefit. Is there a problem I'm missing with allowing the topics to organically broaden out?
Unlike "Hacker News", I interpreted the "Stacker" in SN as refering to the mechanism the site operates on, rather than the subject matter. Even if that was a mistake on my part, why not let people embrace it?
Btw, my suggestion has long been to add a Misc. sub for all these other discussions. Does that strike you as betraying the intention of the site?
For the time being, there doesn't seem to be nearly enough volume of posts outside of the topics you listed to support their own subs.
However, a lot of sports content is related to wagering. If people are utilizing lightning for sports betting that seems on topic, but probably not something most readers of the Bitcoin sub are interested in.
Seems like stacker news has encompassed most of the bitcoin sub culture besides a lot of the carnivory/health stuff. Could be a good way to get people that otherwise would never use sn
Yea I'd say it's completely off topic to stacker news altogether.
There is no universal bitcoin subculture. Plenty of us aren't carnivores and don't buy into a lot of the group-thinky stuff that mostly comes from bitcoin Twitter
I think the fact that economics and tech gets posted to the bitcoin sub is the argument for making a separate sub for them. I like to post econ topics, but I feel a little weird about putting them in the bitcoin sub.
For now it might be fine, but I get the sense some people want a purer Bitcoin sub and there are a lot of posts in the Bitcoin sub that are far more in the weeds than I'm interested in.
The point isn't about how specific the subs need to be, it's about readers being able to see the content they're interested in quickly. Reddit has lots of very precise subs and lots of cross posting.
Reddit is great but I just assumed that SN was going for an improved version of HN.
Either one is fine. The advantage of HN over Reddit is that there's a strong selection bias for smart people. The advantage of SN over both is that they created a much better incentive structure.
Ah I see. Well I think my original comment still stands - if you have to choose which sub to create right now, it should be the one that is most dissimilar to the existing ones, to reach a wider audience.
i post a lot of links about interest rates and inflation in the bitcoin sub, and so far nobody has complained, but every time i post economics content i hesitate because it’s not quite the right fit for the bitcoin sub.
yeah there is definitely a lot of crossover, but today i shared a link about the bank of canada’s interest rate decisions and most people wouldn’t immediately recognize that as bitcoin content.
But when it comes to development the teams are completely different so many different teams are working on lightning implementations. LDK, CLN, LND, Eclair. All have different ways of implementing the protocol with different features. Saying this statement is not being honest
Gangs? That is how the code base is. Plus it’s a public open source project. Humans since the beginning of time are splintered into different groups. But the best ideas that give humans the best chance to live and prosper will win. And the losing groups adapt if they wish or remain completely out the system. Like are we expecting the Amish to adopt bitcoin when they barely use electricity
even though it has nothing to do with bitcoin, it’s one of those topics (politics is another), where anyone can develop an opinion on a current event in a matter of minutes and get into fiery debates with people who disagree.
I'd love to see a new post type for prediction markets. It could look like a poll, but rather than paying one sat to answer, you would choose how much to stake on your answer. Then, after the event, the pool would pay out proportionally to the winners. As far as I can tell, this is a huge missing piece from the lightning ecosystem.
Listen up, friend, here's a game to play,
You must place a bet, don't delay!
With faith in your heart, take a chance,
Don't refuse, give it a joyful dance!
foss
privacy
economics/economy
tech
software development/dev/programming
steelpan vs cast iron (ok this one was a joke)
And maybe we don't need all new subs to pop up on the front page? I wouldn't have a problem with the front page being mainly bitcoin and the rest of the subs kind of separate.
I find most programming communities on the web really annoying. Even on Stackoverflow people comment too often "why do you even want this" or other unhelpful stuff due to circumstances. Using Bing/chatGPT kind of solved this issue for me. So there is the question what advantage SN could bring to the table after that?
I don't think we should have Stack Overflow on SN tbh. I was thinking more like a discussion board for different languages, frameworks and guides/tutorials etc. How that should be moderated and kept on-topic is whole other thing to solve though.
I was thinking more like a discussion board for different languages, frameworks and guides/tutorials etc
Oh, then I misunderstood. That's actually a great idea! Sounds like a subsection of "tech" - is it better to start with broader umbrella sections or with more specific subs? Idk
What about stackof but for bitcoiner discussing bitcoin/
Ln developing stuff
Its like we giving btc developper a great specialized place for their work talk
And maybe we don't need all new subs to pop up on the front page? I wouldn't have a problem with the front page being mainly bitcoin and the rest of the subs kind of separate.
We'll definitely need to do this at some point and let stackers pick what they see on their front page.
Without censorship on SN, I had just assumed SN would get polluted with "look at these" types of image posts, asking for sats, and nonstop "begging".
I don't know that I've even seen more than a couple nudes/selfies here, in the year and a half since I've been on SN -- and even more surprisingly, there have been relatively very few begging posts as well.
Not sure if that means an nsfw wouldn't work, just that there doesn't appear to be organic demand for it.
Sub Privacy and FOSS would fit well, because freedom loving Bitcoiner have to master their personal computing to be really independent. People not mastering their computing will be coerced any update at any inopportune time, against their will and at worst disable them completely.
My proposal is a sub of ~links. By this I don't mean spam links, what I mean is links from useful sites and platforms. This would be useful because there are currently many online tools that not all of us know about. Thus, everyone can share the links of the platforms that they know or are discovering (for example: Exchanges that accept Bitcoin Lightning, Freelancer Platforms that pay with Bitcoin).
Ditch the idea of subs all together and go with a tag system. Obviously this would be a monumental change but it is food for thought.
Instead of having a Bitcoin sub, a privacy sub, a jobs sub, a development sub, an AI sub, an Art sub, etc, you could make it so one tag per post is required, the remaining tags come at an increasing cost
This way I can select tags in interested in and even merge tags to curate threads more specific to my interests.
I might be particularly interested in AI+technology or Bitcoin+development and Bitcoin+art but I may want to blacklist AI+art.
This could eliminate the need for cross posting and having a million subs for specific different reasons. If I'm just searching Bitcoin, I'd see all posts with that tag except for combos I've told the algo I don't like. Maybe if I search privacy, I'll see Nostr+privacy posts and Bitcoin+privacy posts and privacy+tech post.
Moderation would become increasing difficult with however more tags were introduced. A system where we can downvote with sats that would maybe be redistributed to positive contributors could lead to a pretty decently self regulated ecosystem.
Just an idea of had about improving Reddit in the past that could be applied here (potentially) but I'm no backend guy so I imagine this is a big ask
Agree with this idea. There are too many posts that involve more than one category. Take the PSBT coordination project on nostr for instance. What is the main category, bitcoin or nostr?
Some tags could have special prices (like jobs for example).
So instead of a formal tagging method of posts, with UI to accommodate it, wouldn't this comment reply be something to show under the ~bitcoin and ~meta tags, but then also I could add others somewhere in the message, at at the bottom of it, like this one has (and thus you basically search for posts and comments with ~bitcoin) to see this?
Or are you referring to how a moderator can tag my post (or "community style" where there is voting on what tag(s) are set my posts)?
I'm talking about tags acting as their own respective subreddits so to speak.
So instead of Bitcoin being a sub, it's just a tag. Instead of searching through all posts on the Bitcoin sub, we would just be searching or have selected posts with 'bitcoin' as a tag.
This should be viewed differently from a tag like 'nsfw'... Maybe I'll refer to that as a particular post as being 'labeled' as NSFW.
Instead of seeing a post on the privacy sub and the nostr sub and a nostrprivacy sub splintering conversation into three separate threads in three separate subs, you would have the one single thread show up if you were searching the tag of Nostr, or privacy, or Nostr+privacy 'tagchain' if you will, or these were whitelisted tags you've given the algo the go ahead that you prefer to see.
It gives the user the ability to zoom in and out of specific content really easily. Am I searching for Bitcoin or Bitcoin+development or Bitcoin+development+jobs, or etc.
I might think nostr+AI+art is insufferable, I can't stand to see one more AI generated purple ostrich so that's an easy blacklist. AI+art, see ya.
Nostr+beginner or Bitcoin+beginner or coldstorage+advanced etc these don't need to be separate areas when there is so much crossover relevancy. This would eliminate noise and focus discussion.
This helps shake up the whole sub system all together honestly. Scrolling Reddit feels stupid these days, when the same fuckin video shows up on crazyfuckinvideos and damnthatsinteresting and beamazed and videos and natureismetal and contagiouslaughter and funny and wowthatscrazy and Blackmagicfuckery etc etc etc.
If you ask me, the sub system is actually fuckin trash lmfao then you get moderators who decide how everyone else will play in their own little ecosystem they've decided to roleplay as 'God the moderator.'
People are always going to want to splinter off to dig deeper into any given topic and just adding an extra tag is a better solution than creating a whole new domain for that ultra-specific type of post.
Anyway, these are my 2 sats. Feel free to ask further questions
Furthermore, you could still have overarching 'subs' I suppose, but instead of splintering in a million directions, you'd have just the major umbrellas of SPORTS and POLITICS and then the tags and tagchain system could be how they splinter off. I'm just trying to think of how you keep sports news and politics news and gaming news separate when you search news, but maybe you don't, maybe you just blacklist what you don't want to see at you go, and the curation happened naturally over time
Subs could have subs which could have subs. I've always wanted subs on SN to be recursive to solve this problem. e.g. ~bitcoindev should be a sub of ~bitcoin as ~bitcoin/dev
If you ask me, the sub system is actually fuckin trash lmfao then you get moderators who decide how everyone else will play in their own little ecosystem they've decided to roleplay as 'God the moderator.'
This need not be the case. Reddit enables this. This is something that could be decided at sub creation time and not allowed to change (an unchangeable constitution), or something that needs to change by the entire sub voting (democracy), or like on reddit (a system of monarchies/oligarchies) etc.
This idea is appealing. I've been considering it for a long time.
It's not obvious what the exact difference between a tag and a sub is depending on our definition of each. They both ultimately segregate by topic. But ...
IME What people usually mean by tag is that they are arbitrary and can be created on a whim.
Are there other differences that I'm missing?
Every feature of tags that you've described could also be achieved with subs -- because, again, it seems like the only difference between tags and subs is the friction to create the "topic space," ie subs have high friction and tags have low friction.
One of the things I can't figure out with tags is how to get tag "ownership" ... I want stacker created subs to be their own "nations" with their own economics and rules.
Maybe we can figure out a middle ground? Idk. Open to proposals. It's interesting to think about.
The difference is posts would just be tagged appropriately and publicly posted.
not posted IN Bitcoin, or IN AdvancedColdCardTutorial or IN PoliticalDiscussion or IN CanadianConservativePoliticalNews ... why do these need to be specific places with rulers? Just let posts be posts and help facilitate it to those who would be interested in it. The cream will rise to the top. I would require a root tag though, that's where it would be posted "in", if anywhere.... I wouldn't allow posts to be untagged.
side note: I don't know, is tag the wrong word? should it be label? whatever works really. I'm gonna start saying label instead of tag. I don't like to keep saying tag over and over again. tag tag tag, nah..
There would have to be some hierarchical system for the labels to be organized. SportsIceHockeyNHLNewYorkRangers shouldn't be a single labelchain (?_?) at least visibly like so... IDK there's got to be a point where the root of the labels becomes implied in the later ones... seeing {{[Sports]+[Baseball]+[MLB]+[BostonRedSocks]+[Daily Discussion]}} is pretty ugly and we also wouldn't want links like stacker.news/sports/IceHockey/NHL/NewYorkRangers/thread03374989 either I don't think? You'd hope that it'd just be stacker.news/NewYorkRangers/thread03374989 because if were talking about the rangers, we know we're talking about the NHL Sport of Ice Hockey.
I'm all over the place when I'm trying to explain ideas, bare with me. I'm going to present the Idea like I'm a new user creating an account and being introduced to this new ecosystem. I think it would be really easy and intuitive to onboard new users. let us roleplay:
==
I, the brand new user of Stacker News, am looking to participate in discussions of my favorite hockey team team, amongst other things that interest me.. As I make an account, I quickly create a lightning login account, click next, and some labels pop up.. I'm being asked to select labels that may be of interest to me. I choose some basic ones... they offered me some options to dig deeper into some of the different labels but I just want to browse so I've made some choices and left the preselected labels selected.
After clicking next, I'm browsing the home page... I would see posts that are trending with labels like [Sports] and [Gaming] and [Art] and [Politics] and [Science] and [Technology] and [Economics].
I click on the label [Sports] under one of the posts and I'm brought to a new page of posts all labelled with [Sports] including [NFL] and [MLS] and [Cricket] and [Ice Hockey] and [Boxing] and so on.
I click on a [Ice Hockey] label on a post and same thing, Now all posts I see are trending posts labelled with [Ice Hockey]... I can search these posts by top of the / most trending / most discussed / most... of the [choice of time frame] Like every other time I am reading through similarly labeled posts. While browsing [Ice Hockey], I see trending posts labeled with [NHL] and [SHL] and [KHL] and [OHL]. I click on [NHL].
I see posts with labels including [NewYorkRangers] and [BostonBruins] and [VegasGoldenKnights]... I click on [NewYorkRangers] and see trending posts with this label. I have arrived at the content I was seeking and have found the discussions I am looking for. I follow the [NewYorkRangers] label. When I follow it, I'm suggested a few other labels that users who follow [NewYorkRangers] also follow, including [NHL], [IceHockey]+[Prospect]+[Analysis], and [NewYorkJets]. I like to geek out about the draft so I'll also follow the [IceHockey]+[Prospect]+[Analysis] labelchain.
I go back to home page and begin browsing whatever content I am interested in. I start following labels that interest me. I follow [Advanced]+[Bitcoin]+[ColdCard]+[Tutorial]. I also follow [Advanced]+[Tutorial], so I'll see any post that has both labels on it. I follow [Historical]+[Japanese]+[Art] and [Modern]+[InteriorDesign]. I click on the 'trending labels' tab and It shows me info on how popular certain tags are, historical data on when certain combinations became popular. Other labelchains that may be of interest to me.
As I continue to use the website, I organize my lists of labels so I can easily sort through what I want to see with ease. Users share their own personal Labelchains. Some have them directly available on their user profile page and I can just click on it and see his exact feed on SN with all of his interests. I can save his labelchain and anyone elses and swap between them when I feel like my own feed is getting stale. When I see a label I like while I'm browsing someone else's feed, I can click a button that says Save to --> skreepchain #2 --> List --> Politics, or whatever you know?
Also, last thing, the creation of labels should be in some way crowdfunded so they are determined and not all over the place. You don't want users to create [Funny] and [Funnnny] and [Fuuunnny] and [funnnnnny] and [fffunny] and [ffuuunnnyy] and [fuunyyy] to be labels... you'd just want [Funny].... Then maybe one day a streamer who goes by [fffunny] comes along and his community wants to fund the tag to distinguish that particular content. Ultimately, you want determined tags the community has approved and actually wants to use.
I'd imagine users could place a deposit on a label proposal which would need X amount of users to donate a small amount in order to make that a label. Users could even go to a tab of the website where they see a label proposal board, where they pledge maybe 100 sats and pre-follow labels that have been proposed by users. This way the Label system could grow naturally. You could reward users for being founders with a special emblem. Funding for the label could even then be a pool that is used to reward users who post with the newly approved label to kickstart activity using that label.
In this process, you could determine ties to other labels, as in [IceHockey] and [NHL] are bound, just as [NHL] and [BostonBruins] are tied, but has nothing to do with [InteriorDesign]. This gives opportunity to determine community consensus on spelling/formatting and what should be and shouldn't be chained together and what is or isn't acceptable for this website (a profane label would never make it past proposal, and it would be like putting money in a fire lol...)
I've gone on long much too long for one post.... I've probably brought up too many things for y'all to even approach a cohesive response to lol... I actually do really like the overall idea of making the domains in which these posts exist much more modular and interconnected than tons of little nation states with their little rulers ruling over their little ecosystems.
Feel free to ask further questions, I noticed both you @koob and @kr took some form of interest in the concept. Let me know what you think.
Easiest to consider using a system like defining labels as parents, children and siblings. Sports would be a parent label to Ice Hockey.
Hockey would be considered the child of Sports, sibling to Football and Baseball and so on, and parent to NHL, grandparent to NewYorkRangers. These Family trees are how the network should naturally grow out and be defined.
This also helps because all hockey is sports but not all sports is hockey. All NHL is hockey but not all hockey is NHL.
As the community grows, it could crowd fund binding tags together so when you're whether you're searching Cooking or Tutorials, you would come across a post tagged as [Cooking]+[Tutorial]
Then eventually the Tutorial community crowdfunds their Beginner / Advanced prefix tags when they feel it's worth it. I follow [Beginner]+[Tutorial] and I'm telling the algo I like chains that contain those two labels.
Now my feed shows me more Beginner + [cooking, math, guitar, drums, exercise] + Tutorial.
I can click the Guitar+Tutorial label and tell the algo I don't like these two labels together.
Communities should define their own prefixes and suffixes.
For gaming, there could be prefixes like Retro, PC, Playstation, Xbox, Mobile, Board. It could have suffixes like Review, Discussion, Trailer, Gameplay, Stream etc.
why do these need to be specific places with rulers?
Why do companies need leaders?
tbh A lot of what you described sounds like the way we are imagining subs. The only difference afaict between subs and tags is ... their creation and not their consumption.
You get into creation here:
I'd imagine users could place a deposit on a label proposal which would need X amount of users to donate a small amount in order to make that a label. Users could even go to a tab of the website where they see a label proposal board, where they pledge maybe 100 sats and pre-follow labels that have been proposed by users. This way the Label system could grow naturally. You could reward users for being founders with a special emblem. Funding for the label could even then be a pool that is used to reward users who post with the newly approved label to kickstart activity using that label.
This sounds a lot like a sub by another name IMO. What do you think, specifically, is bad about subs that's solved with topics?
bitcoin - the new global reserve
nostr - the new global social media exchange
jobs - to share jobs
macroeconomy - to share news about dollar and bank collapse etc
technology - emerging technologies like flyzipline.com those of which are disruptive
health - another core area people should invest into
food - agriculture is another core area
education - learning and upskilling
ai - artificial intelligence is anyways coming
democracy - cornerstone of civilisation
~monero for discussion on privacy tech being applied, how it affects darknet marketplaces, ransomware hacks and sanctioned entities, discussion on cpu mining and how it relates to tor's new builtin ddos system, discussion on a healthy tail emission for continued block security, and L1 scalability, among other things
What we have already are fundamentals. Bitcoin is money, Nostr is social, Jobs is livelihood. So I ask what are similar fundamentals?
~energy - sourcing, production and use of energy
~economy - tracking the living web of activity formed by the subjects of the other subs
As much as I'm fond of what's above and their aesthetic, I believe the best way to grow is to build tools that get SN toward thousands of subs. Reddit is a good model whereas SN can take advantage of sat superpowers.
I think there is great opportunity and these posts can't do good on the ~/bitcoin sub. A technology sub would be great but it would also fragment existing posting base in a way an ai art sub would not.
second argument for this: SN isn't hosting images on it's own platform rn. An ~aiart sub would leverage this advantage piggybacking on these platforms. And image content has more engagement than text.
~economy - a general macroeconomics sub.
People like to post inflation/economy/job reports here. They mostly post those to substantiate hodl, but i think these posts are very frequent and they gather many sats
You can see what else the SN community is interested in and more easily identify what new subs to add
New users who like the concept of SN, but whose primary interests aren't bitcoin or nostr will have a better experience using the site.
Another idea, which might be better implemented as a new post type than sub, is Prediction Markets. We've been having fun predicting sports outcomes, but it's totally dependent on someone promising a bounty for the winner. Being able to stake sats to a pool that pays out to the winners would be very cool.
Both are under threat, and too many people have a lack of knowledge on what is being done to erode privacy globally. From digital ids to cbdc to internet censorship... The more we are aware the better.
I would like to see "Social Good" - there is a wealth of scam related stuff out there and negativity. Would be nice to absorb some good things for once.
Another idea: the more potentially toxic the sub can be, the higher the post/reply fee.
For example, politics sub should have way higher fees than a gardening sub, unless gardeners suddenly split into two camps on which fertilizer to use - synthetic fertilizer maximalists vs cow shit(coiners).
/~security/~privacy/~technologycreate that bitcoin circular economy right here on SN!
nostr) to filter.