1) There is a very small community of people who do algorithmic trading, this is probably your core audience. Unfortunetly we're scattered all over at places like http://www.wilmott.com/index.cfm and nuclear phynance. What you do to get people like us probably dictates how successful your site becomes
2) There is a much bigger set of people who like the idea of maybe one day doing algorithmic trading or like to keep up on it once in a while. These people will bring eyeballs but probably add very little of value to the discussion.
Not because they are less worthy but because of the same reason the average person can't contribute to mathoverflow.com, you need to have your head in this space almost full time to contribute.
So I think the question you need to answer is:
Why is a semi pro trader( someone who trades up to 2 million of their own money), taking 30 minutes out of their day to read your site?
What value do you bring over already established discussion forums?
That's also a good site. Although, he covers few whitepapers and no news. Also, his blog links aren't curated very aggressively. There is overlap, though. Perhaps over time the comments on Quant News will become part of the appeal. I just got the forum put in last night.
Edit: Thinking about your question...
I think Wilmott and Nuclear Phynance have great communities, but they would be better with a news stream to stimulate the discussion. Things move slowly until an interesting topic comes up. Then a good conversation begins. I also think people want to talk about trade ideas, but they are afraid of giving away proprietary information. So, the academic literature could jumpstart the conversation by providing detailed experiments to discuss.
I need a site like this. I like the set of stories currently on the front page - it's a good selection of the sort of things I want to read.
How are the stories selected? It doesn't appear to be an HN/Reddit clone - at least I don't see upvotes.
I also hate to make such a trivial criticism, but I find it hard to read. Maybe it's the default blue-on-white? (Hope this isn't gratuitous negativity, whatever that means.)
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll find a better color scheme.
The site is curated. I have a script monitoring many sources. Most of what I collect is trash, so I only keep the best each day. When I discover a new blog, I sometimes include links to a few previous posts.
I don't think the community is big enough to ever sustain a HN clone. One was tried a few years ago (quant.ly), but got shut down.
What's this site's value proposition?
Looking at this some more here are some ideas...
1) There is a very small community of people who do algorithmic trading, this is probably your core audience. Unfortunetly we're scattered all over at places like http://www.wilmott.com/index.cfm and nuclear phynance. What you do to get people like us probably dictates how successful your site becomes
2) There is a much bigger set of people who like the idea of maybe one day doing algorithmic trading or like to keep up on it once in a while. These people will bring eyeballs but probably add very little of value to the discussion.
Not because they are less worthy but because of the same reason the average person can't contribute to mathoverflow.com, you need to have your head in this space almost full time to contribute.
So I think the question you need to answer is:
Why is a semi pro trader( someone who trades up to 2 million of their own money), taking 30 minutes out of their day to read your site?
What value do you bring over already established discussion forums?