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https://github.com/fraction/fraction.github.io

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https://github.com/fraction/fraction.github.io

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Part of something bigger.

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README

          

**Fraction is in beta! Please feel free to [check it out](http://beta.fraction.io/), [contribute](http://code.fraction.io/), or [get notified when we launch](http://eepurl.com/PS9SD)!**

## The Problem
Many web communities rely on a direct democracy to decide which content they should show you. **The things you're shown aren't designed to be relevant to you**, they're designed to be relevant to a hypothetical "average community member". As a community grows, it's [difficult to maintain the character of the community](http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html), which leads to censorship by unelected moderators. Once the gap between a group of users and the "average community member" becomes large enough, the minority group will start their own community elsewhere, as we've seen recently with communities like [Digg](http://digg.com), [Reddit](http://reddit.com), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/), [Designer News](http://news.ycombinator.com), [Growth Hackers](http://growthhackers.com/), [Hubski](http://hubski.com/), [EchoJS](http://www.echojs.com/), [Inbound](http://inbound.org/), [DataTau](http://www.datatau.com/), [Lobsters](https://lobste.rs/), [USV](http://www.usv.com/), [Biotech Pulse](http://news.harlembiospace.com/), [FireSpotting](http://firespotting.com/), and dozens of others (many of which have failed).

## The Solution
Using machine learning techniques like [collaborative filtering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering) and [natural language processing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing), we want show you things that are relevant to you, let the community moderate itself, and dramatically hinder the fragmentation of our communities. We don't need *more* communities, we need a smarter community. Instead of [competing](https://xkcd.com/927/) with the existing communities, we want to consolidate them and allow the cross-polination of people and ideas.

## The Hard Part
This has never been done before, so experimentation is the name of the game. The first community we'll be working with is Hacker News, a fantastic reseource for both programmers and entrepreneurs, hosted by YCombinatator. Once we're finished, we'll invite everyone on the [public beta list](http://eepurl.com/PS9SD) to check it out.

## The Bottom Line
We'd love to hear your thoughts on this project, so please feel free to ask questions and make suggestions by [creating a new issue](https://github.com/fraction/fraction/issues/new). Interesting in participating? Please check out the [contribution guidelines](https://github.com/fraction/fraction/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) before submitting your pull request. Thanks!