I've seen several posts with people looking for other hackers to collaborate with or looking for help. If I setup a hacker social network with the open source social network engine Elgg, would anyone here use it?
HN has a social network. It's called this website and email. I don't want people "poking" me while I'm trying to GID. The quality of HN is a direct result of it <i>not</i> being like any other online environment, social networks <i>especially</i>.<p>Joking aside, emailing and calling and meeting people <i>really is</i> a great form of communication. The barrier in this sense is a TRULY GREAT thing.<p>Also: Github.com for me is the most direct network that aligns with HN. On github you are what you contribute. That's beautiful.<p>Many people seem to think its a good idea in the realm of idealand. I truly doubt HN can be ported to a social network. Anyone I'd be interested in social-networking-it-up with is too damn busy to dick around with me on some casual website.
I have to second all the other answers. I guess the term "social network" carries a lot of (crappy) connotations with it, but if it lives up to the promise, connecting like-minded tech people to hang out and share knowledge: Sure.<p>I just have some difficulties to imagine what it would need to look like to
a) don't end up copying FB and
b) not copying HN itself<p>So I'm on the edge on this one. FB et all don't interest me, this is interesting because of the (controlled, on-topic, interesting) contributions. How are you planning to build a social network with the same merits? Are you going to build a new, different Identi.ca? (which, imo, is a failure in terms of adoption, and they mostly targeted the "tech" demographic)
I'd certainly be interested in such a network, though some questions of intentions and differentiation arise quickly, e.g. How would it be different from existing sites, like, ummm, HN? or Forrst.com?<p>Presumably we'd also want some way to find people quickly - how to organize that? Some dimensions would include technology preferences, time/availability, stage of startup/work, one's One True Editor, etc.<p>Have you seen this spreadsheet of people looking for co-founders?
<a href="http://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?key=t1_0CjyeF5QqMwgh6AFGtqA&hl=en#gid=9" rel="nofollow">http://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?key=t1_0CjyeF5QqMwgh6AFG...</a>
I might, depending on the kind of place it turned out to be. If it was a constructive environment like this one, where I know the goal is not to become like facebook, I think I'd like the gaps it would fill in that I feel this site could use (private messages for example).
I probably would, yeah. Sign me up. :-)<p>Maybe incorporate some of the ideas from this thread: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1514803" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1514803</a>