Remember when it used to be "Digg for X"?

I kinda thought subreddits took a lot of the wind out of those sails.

I think there is something about the HN layout that makes it feel more "homegrown", which has no ads or images at all. Kind of reminds me of an old-timey newspaper, or the WSJ "What's News."

Not saying it can't be improved.

It is simple. I honestly like it a lot compared to what passes for forums nowadays. I'm still working on what I hope will be a decent open source clone in Laravel for the masses (though i don't doubt someone else also is and probably better.)

A lot about hacker news could be improved, I think, like adding a JSON api by default and being able to control the depth level of comments. More importantly though, I think the simple format facilitates discussion a lot better than the noisy, avatar-riddled nightmares like phpbb, etc.

Now we need a newsletter

A hacker news for hacker news-like sites (and, maybe, forum design in general... or whatever)

I would suggest "hnforx.com" but someone got to it...