Why would I want HN to be a megaphone for Famous Joe Blow X when I'd much rather have him actively participating and helping out in the threads with the rest of us?
This is a very bad idea in my opinion. Since I have no clue how to run a busy site, that means it'll probably happen. :)
Why would I want HN to be a megaphone for Famous Joe Blow X when I'd much rather have him actively participating and helping out in the threads with the rest of us?
Because the odds of getting Famous Joe Blow X to run a HN AMA are much, much higher than getting him to become an active HNer. We're talking about a one-time commitment versus extended involvement in our community.
Look at the roster of AMA guests on Reddit. How many of them are active Redditors? It's non-zero, but not substantially so. And yet, by participating in AMAs, they enrich Reddit's community.
> by participating in AMAs, they enrich Reddit's community
That's the part I'm skeptical of, at least keeping in mind what community means in the HN sense. They don't really seem to be part of the Reddit community at all; they're more like the "content" that the Reddit community is discussing any given day. What's more interesting about the HN community to me is that some pretty accomplished people are actually part of the community.
Given the quality of questions/answers in a typical AMA, I'm not even sure how it's different from just linking to an offsite TechCrunch interview. Is it just some kind of fuzzy feeling of having participated?
I agree, I think the fuzzy feeling sums it up. Celebrity AMA's are some of the most unenlightening things I've ever read. You get some obvious questions about obvious subjects and the answer is usually some variation of 'yeah that was great'. It should be no surprise either - its a conversation started with no premise. If someone consequential to an issue decides to comment on that issue it can be very very interesting. Hackernews still has that to some degree. Even if its gone, can we not resurrect it as this zombie?
You could see an HN AMA as one person chiming in on multiple discussions in a short time (which may be much more doable for them), this depends on the questions asked, of course. And that is something HN hopefully regulates by itself.
Just since the 'setup' is the same, it doesn't mean the results will be the same. HN as a whole vs Reddit is proof of this on itself, I would say.
"Because the odds of getting Famous Joe Blow X to run a HN AMA are much, much higher than getting him to become an active HNer"
However, if Mr. Blow is not going to be active on HN anyway, what is the advantage of an AMA on HN over one on Reddit? And since the goal is to have Mr. Blow answer questions, what evidence is there that he is more likely to do so on HN than Reddit?
What makes HN great is not really fucking smart people answering fifteen questions of varying quality in 90 minutes. It's RFSP spending 90 minutes answering one really good question.
The down arrow makes voting pretty much impossible on mobile devices. Can I get 18 downvotes here so my karma will be below 500 and I won't have to put up with the down arrow anymore?
Can the possibility of one-time commitment reduce extended involvement ‘rate’, or otherwise negatively affect community (attract unexpected public, possibly)? Taking into account differences between the audiences of HN and Reddit.
i think a fair few are active redditors but they dont use their anonymous accounts for their AMA for obvious reasons. Perhaps not Woody Harrelson.
Of course there is the reverse, where Will Shatner didnt want to do an AMA as he intended to stick around on a daily basis as opposed to a "one night only" type of event. That sort of thing seems to be what HN would prefer (if it wasnt will shatner but someone more useful).
Many AMAs are not about famous people, but just people that are in a position you would love to ask them questions, in general or because of some specific news / event in the world or alike. With that I don't want to say that AMAs are necessarily good for HN.
I agree. Even with my short time I have spent on HN, I find the place to be much more civil and information with less clutter than Reddit. Keep HN's identity strong and don't try to "copy" Reddit. I would think that if you allow a few AMAs it will quickly devolve as everyone would want to do an AMA.
AMAs still have to get upvoted and have questions posted. If J. Random Whoareyouagain posts an AMA, it'll either die in "new" with 2 points, or fall off the front page with 10 points and two comments.
HN AMAs would fill a niche that doesn't really exist elsewhere: the opportunity to have questions asked by an audience focussed on tech and entrepreneurship. Reddit's too mainstream to get questions about the things HNers tend to care about upvoted. I'd certainly appreciate the flavour that HN would bring to an AMA.
It can be both. An AMA is "Ask me anything" which is more focused on somebody (Or something that happened).. which is very different than the same person posting a meaningful comment on a discussion. As far as I know, PG regularly comments on HN and there are often links to his essay or interviews. An AMA isn't so much different than an interview...
The implication is that HNers are more interested in Q&A sessions over what amounts to a lecture. You could frame that as positively or negatively as you like: a fixation on fame and fortune over substance; a disinterest in having someone else explain what you could learn on your own; a preference for an interactive setting rather than a receptive one; etc.
The level of discourse in HN comments is leaps and bounds better than that in Reddit. At the very least, you'd get a much more useful and legible comment thread. And presumably the topics would be more focused on the HN crowd, where as Reddit runs the gamut
> Why would I want HN to be a megaphone for Famous Joe Blow X when I'd much rather have him actively participating and helping out in the threads with the rest of us?
I'd much rather just straight up ask him questions instead of waiting for him to appear.
Famous and quasi-famous people generally don't publish their primary email. The whole point of the AMA is that it offers a public forum in which anyone can ask anything to people with whom they generally wouldn't interact.
My first reaction was similar. However, I realized that an HN AMA, need not mimic a Reddit AMA. I created a prototype HN AMA here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5250690
It doesn't seem to be very successful. Then again, I'm not that interesting.
Why would I want HN to be a megaphone for Famous Joe Blow X when I'd much rather have him actively participating and helping out in the threads with the rest of us?
This is a very bad idea in my opinion. Since I have no clue how to run a busy site, that means it'll probably happen. :)