G+ communities, as a rule, are simply broken. I created one of my one with a carefully selected set of members, and that worked well for discussion. It's limited in specialised knowledge, though not bad.
Ello is tiny, though there are again some interesting folks. I'm simply impressed by the healthy socialisation.
I've done some rigorous "tracking the conversation" studies, which are based on terms I have interest in, across numerous sites. Blogs are still surprisingly relevant.
Lobsters is another technical-oriented HN-like site.
You need to be invited by someone there, and they actually show the full invite graph, and I believe will somewhat hold you accountable if you invite spammers or trolls.
That being said, if you won't cause trouble I'd be willing to send you an invite if you email the account in my userpage on HN ;)
Ello is tiny, though there are again some interesting folks. I'm simply impressed by the healthy socialisation.
I've done some rigorous "tracking the conversation" studies, which are based on terms I have interest in, across numerous sites. Blogs are still surprisingly relevant.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...
I'm not familiar with lobsters.