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I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepre
by tarikjn 10y ago
I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a scientific community, but it is not the case, and even then politics do interact with science, as one can conduct scientific experiments on government decisions, or politics can attack scientific community positions (e.g. climate change).
The way this sounds is that you are more concerned about politics as in people who take party positions and may feel excluded as a group when the majority of the community takes a different position. This is a slightly different issue i.e. party politics, and I think it is fine/a good thing, but it is also important to distinguish the two. This should essentially be under the same umbrella as personal attacks, as they are essentially the same thing.
- davidw 10y ago> head in the sand There are a ton of other sites where you can follow and debate politics all you want. I'm starting to stick my nose into local politics here in Bend, Oregon, but there's no reason I need to talk about it on HN. I'm ok with compartmentalizing things: HN for tech/startups/'interesting things', and other sites for other things. I love bike racing, too, and feel that it's the best sport in the world, but I see no need to introduce bike racing articles here.
- fnovd 10y ago>There are a ton of other sites where you can follow and debate politics all you want. But where do you draw the line of what is 'politics' and what is 'cool nerdy tech stuff'? Is a breakdown of 538's method of poll aggregation too politically charged, even if there's a perfectly good overlap of math and statistics? If Trump makes an out-of-left-field statement about repatriating corporate money, are we prohibited from talking about how it will affect Apple? A blanket ban of 'political threads and topics' seem harsh, even if just for a week. I personally haven't found the political content on this site to be out of bounds, considering the monumental political upheavals we've been witnessing over the past year.
- joggery 10y agoPolitics is about who to blame and hacking is about solving problems. (Blaming is the opposite of solving problems.)
- ada1981 10y agoInteresting world view, and not one that I share. Politics is about how resources are allocated in society and can often be a very effective solution to problems.
- Xylakant 10y agoPolitics is even more about how society wants resources to be allocated than it is about how they are allocated. That makes it an important and all-pervasive topic
- icebraining 10y agoThat reductionist view of politics is part of the problem. Politics is the process of making decisions applying to all members of each group. It's essential and a part of what makes us human.
- trav4225 10y agoIn modern vernacular it seems that that sense might be better expressed as "policy", rather than "politics".
- icebraining 10y agoPolitics is the process to decide upon the policy.
- joggery 10y agoConsider that the machinery to make group decisions and allocate resources already exists (laws, institutions, government, etc). It is imperfect and can be improved. But what is relevant here is that groups of people wish to alter the machinery in certain fixed (uncreative) ways. The unconscious motive is that of preserving their own identities. An extreme case would be a Dr Evil figure who will not examine his own heart and needs the world to burn just so he can pretend to himself that he's a good person. So he makes the world burn. At every stage convinced of his own righteousness. This explains why 'war is the continuation of politics by other means'. What passes for peace is trench warfare where the only progress is sideways. Improving the machinery may be desirable but in practice politics is dominated by preventing inevitable perturbations from escalating into open hatred and violence. (More parochially one can tell when politics is influencing the discussion because there is always blaming going on.)
- falcolas 10y ago> but there's no reason I need to talk about it on HN. If you start a business, politics impact you. If you are an employee, politics impact you. If you invest in businesses, politics impact you in a huge way. Uber and AirBnB are no longer just startups, they are very politically active corporations. But they both started, if not from here, then from other communities just like this one.
- davidw 10y agoPolitics is way more important than most of what we discuss here. Think about topics like gay marriage: being able to marry who you want is a much bigger deal for most people than whether Node.js is better than Erlang (Erlang is way better!). That's another reason why it should be banned, because it will crowd out other topics by dint of being more important to more people - which is also a feedback loop, as more people get drawn in for the politics.
- chrissnell 10y agoI fully support this detox week. As someone whose political views don't align with the average HN reader, I often feel marginalized by unfair downvoting in political discussion, even though I have made my points in an informed and respectful way. It often feels like there is one prevailing slant on this site and those of the majority are free to push their views while the rest of us must either read it and ignore it or face the onslaught of downvotes if we express a dissenting opinion. I'd rather see HN go politics-free forever. Political discussions do not enjoy the same level of objectivity that technical and business discussions do. Frankly, it may be impossible to expect objectivity within political discussion because our political feelings are so deeply-held and tied to our individual upbringings, culture, and locale. Unless HN can figure out how to give fair treatment to minority opinions, it's best to exclude these discussions entirely.
- mattnewton 10y agoThe rub is, a lot of difficult conversations lead to what are effectively political answers. Take the amazon go which is on the front page right now. We need to be able to have a conversation about job displacing technologies, and hacker news has been a good venue for smart, civilized discussion on the topic. I'm all for flagging uncivilized discussions, but eliminating discussions outright because they might make people feel uncomfortable or might turn uncivil seems like we are missing a really important piece to the news we discuss here. Minority opinions are never going to have "fair treatment" by the majority. I've been down voted several times for my opinions and I'll take it again just to be able to have the discussion here.
- fweespeech 10y agoYeah, it honestly seems like HN should split into two forums effectively. Tech (No politics, etc.) / Not Tech. The trying to force it all into a single view seems to be creating some friction.
- dang 10y agoThe distinction isn't tech/notech. That's the most important thing to understand about this whole site! https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I do think the purely political forum that a minority of users here seem to want, would best be served by a different site.
- KineticLensman 10y ago> I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. I see this great move as a way of the community lifting its head out of a sandy quagmire to glance at the shining beacon, the vision on the hill, the where we want to be, unsullied by political nausea. Sure, in a week we can get back into the grim reality, the tech-noir crapsack future, but perhaps for one week we can focus on a positive future and its soaring aspirations. Go Dang!
- mememachine 10y agoNot all of us view political topics as nausea inducing. I don't think politics have overtaken the site or even become a significant part of it, so I wonder why politics-averse individuals cant just avoid political threads?
- dang 10y agoIt's in HN's DNA to have a single community. The path you're talking about leads to subreddits, which would make for a different kind of site, one that was broken into silos rather than being in the same world. This is an important point, because it touches on the what-HN-is-and-isn't thing. HN is a community for the the intellectually curious, who come here for a wide range of interests (some of which have political aspects, of course--there's no getting away from that). But there's a different kind of users, ideologically committed ones, who use HN primarily for political battle. That's not something that sits well with the purpose of this site, as I tried to explain above. Those users really want a different kind of site than HN, and need to find another, or maybe start a new one. Plenty of new sites have spawned from HN; that's partly a function of our not trying to be all things. HN has always been in the lucky position of not needing to grow for growth's sake, so we're happy when people who want a different kind of community find it, or create it.
- duncanawoods 10y agoCan you carve out an exception for economic / startup relevant legislation please? As a UK based startup, I would really value HN support navigating Brexit and VATMOSS changes.
- djsumdog 10y agoI actually haven't seen very many political stories on here. I've personally avoided most of the political crap too, so maybe I just didn't click on a lot of it (and therefore selectively un-memoryed it). I don't feel this need to be an explicit policy. I mean it gets into the entire "what is politics debate." Hackernews is about hacking (software, hardware, life), and I still see tons of that on here -- well that and Amazon spam, but that's mostly due to their recent conference/product announcements and will probably die down soon.
- Frondo 10y agoThe problem I see is that everything is politics, because politics is the air we breathe as a society. It's asking the question of how we live in community. I think what dang is after getting of is tribalism, where people show group membership with displays of insults, meme-dropping, etc. Different things, but if any group can separate tribalism from politics, through thoughtful community-making, I'd say HN can.
- ada1981 10y agoThis is getting closer to the answer.
- icebraining 10y agohttp://www.goreading.net/Red%20Mars/24.html http://www.goreading.net/Red%20Mars/24.html
- lintiness 10y agogood lord. peter thiel's satan on earth for backing trump, not because he agrees with him, but because he views him as disruptive to a broken system. can't you see how "political" and unthoughful all that is?
- stevedonovan 10y agoVery useful distinction. One mark of tribalism is a set of knee-jerk responses and stock vocabulary. If people could at least check in their tribal phrases, we would have better conversations. For example: 'racists', 'crybullies', 'deplorables' and so forth. Although left-libertarian, I don't hold with all this 'no platforming' nonsense, for instance. Leave the words behind, and find less loaded terms in an attempt at recovering public discourse
- golemotron 10y agoI find it disturbing too. Right now one of the top stories on HN is about Amazon Go and the top comment is about whether the destruction of jobs it could cause is socially acceptable. I don't know whether that is politics or not but I can't imagine discussing Amazon Go as a technology without having that discussion. In fact when you look at HN very little is about particular technologies. Most of our discussion is around the implications.
- mattnewton 10y agoI can't agree enough. I'm all for flagging uncivilized discussions, but preemptively censoring things that might turn into uncivilized discussions seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater - we need to be able to talk about difficult things.
- mightybyte 10y agoWe need to be able to talk about them, but it doesn't need to be here. There's value in places where you know you can come to discuss certain categories of things and avoid others. That is what's going on here.
- golemotron 10y agoIt seems that because social implications of technology can lead to political discussion, it's out of bounds.
- mattnewton 10y agoI'm not arguing for a free for all, I am arguing that the proposed ban on politics for a week is too broad a brush, because it catches several relevant conversations, and the serious offsenses are already against the rules.
- michaelchisari 10y agoI've been attending a lot of AI/Data Science conferences lately, and it's incredible to me how this is not a major part of any conversation about AI and automation. A talk I recently attended by a data scientist from Amazon had him gloating about how many jobs he could eliminate. Ironically, the only speaker who brought it up as a major social problem we'll have to tackle is someone from Uber. His solution was less than satisfactory, but at least he recognized the issue. I don't want to pretend we live in a world of algorithms without consequence.
- md224 10y ago> I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. This community already has its head in the sand. Political topics are flagged to oblivion, and even those that aren't inevitably inspire so much discussion that the flamewar detector goes off and nukes the thread. Imagine: in an era where we rail against filter bubbles, a website punishes threads that are too active! The Devil's Advocate says "Hey now, there's certainly a time and place for political discussion, but HN is a tech forum, not a political forum." Good point, but HN is also a Third Place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place), and being a Third Place means promoting Civic Engagement. I agree that HN should strive to stay on topic, but there is plenty of overlap between tech and politics and I think that space deserves to be explored by the community.
- nkassis 10y agoI've had a hard time finding a good place to have substantive political discussion outside HN. Anyone have suggestions?
- vcarl 10y agoThe best I've found is reddit.com/r/neutralpolitics. It's strictly moderated, with minimum comment lengths and required source links when making factual claims.
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoI too have not found a good place to have any type of political discussion. Even on HN it's better but still almost impossible especially if you have any type of opinion or have done anything in the past that doesn't align with what the majority of opinions are on this site. Politics seem to work like religion in the brain. I'm not sure it's possible to have a good discussion.
- vcarl 10y agoI'm happy to see particularly interesting pieces that deal with politics here, but I've seen far too much "breaking" political news here for my tastes. I'd much prefer if HN's politics were more deep and analytical, rather than following the same reality show that I can watch on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- knucklesandwich 10y agoIt's not like political affiliation is the only example of ingroup-vs-outgroup conflict on HN. I think it's an incredibly weak argument to even pretend like this is somehow a distinguishing characteristic of political discussion that makes it somehow more inflammatory. If you want to enforce the code of conduct more strongly, fine. But highlighting political discussion as somehow worse than other kinds of discussion involving competing views is incredibly frustrating and only serves those who may benefit from engineers putting their political and ethical agency to bed in a work/work discussion context. Politics is about choice, its about reasoning out decisions and coming to a consensus on those decisions. Work life is not exempt from the scope of those decisions, and trying to keep that discussion out is a pretty questionable practice.
- IgorPartola 10y agoMeh. This is for a week. Also, taking it to an absurd, think of /r/aww. Would you support having 50% of the stories on there be links to CNN/Fox/MSNBC? There's a line somewhere, and there are multiple ways to address it: have a separate section or site for political news (call it PHN), have specific days or a quota of political news, to try to keep on topic, allow it, but moderate it so it has something to do with the Hacker part of Hacker News, etc. Why not experiment. Even the most HN-addicted of us can probably live without this one part of HN for a week.
- kuschku 10y ago> think of /r/aww. Would you support having 50% of the stories on there be links to CNN/Fox/MSNBC? There's a line somewhere Yet, that's the necessary result whenever declawing becomes a topic - /r/aww then becomes not just political, but even very tribal.
- xienze 10y agoI think this is a fantastic idea -- it seems the trend today is to inject politics into absolutely everything. In the past, the prevailing wisdom was to avoid political and religious topics in the workplace and technical spheres (conferences, message boards like HN, etc.). Focus on the tech and just the tech and you'll be surprised how much nastiness is naturally eliminated from this board.
- wbillingsley 10y agoAnd as one, the community set down the Republican / Democrat placards they had so crudely been swinging against each other ... and picked up once more the placards for vi and emacs.
- Neliquat 10y agoSeconded. Even the old M$ vs moms basement linux arguments would be better.
- rpeden 10y agoI think it is reasonable to avoid political subjects that are off topic. Which is difficult, I know, because on-topic for HN is literally 'Anything that good hackers would find interesting.' Perhaps, for politics, it would be good to try to limit political discussion to things that affect the technology world broadly, and startups specifically? In the past, topics like those have been discussed here quite productively. Since the U.S. election, I've noticed posts getting flagged that seemed like they were worthy of discussion. I'm not sure if the flagging was ideologically motivated, or if it just happened because of election fatigue. Even though I don't live in the U.S., I still like to see these discussions happen because the impacts of things that happen tend to have repercussions throughout the tech world. Maybe limiting comments on political topics to people with 500+ or karma would make reasonable discussion more likely? It's not insanely difficult to react that level in a month or two if you're making thoughtful contributions to the community.
- tropo 10y agoLimiting to "people with 500+ or karma" doesn't make for a reasonable discussion unless you like an echo chamber with 100% pure San Francisco values.
- douche 10y agoSubmitting about three, maybe four, good frontpage-worthy technical stories can net you 500 karma.
- dragonwriter 10y agoThere's no reasonable definition of "pure San Francisco values" for which that would be true even with a 20K karma threshold. HN certainly isn't a representative sample of the (global or US) population, ideologically speaking, but the idea that HN is a pure representation of any single ideology, either in general or at any particular karma threshold where there are more than a handful of users, is absurd.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- thembones 10y ago"Why does calloc exist?" That's the title of one of the articles linked on the front page right now. I would challenge anyone to show us where the NYT, Economist, Drudge, Huffington Post, etc have anything like this. They don't. Why not? Because it's not what people come there to read about. I would argue this is "Hacker News". If you want politics, what's wrong with the 10k other sites dedicated to these topics? To note, all of the aforementioned have tech sections discussing topics like the ones you mentioned here, but none of them have anything like Hacker News does on a daily basis. This isn't censorship anymore than Cosmopolitan magazine not covering Nascar very often (if at all). Know your audience.
- Kaedon 10y agoAn audience can have more than one interest. For example, tech sections in newspapers are roughly analogous to political stories on HN.
- allemagne 10y agoI agree with the week detox but I also agree that it probably shouldn't be permanent. The equivalent analogy might be that the HN magazine has published too many politically slanted stories in recent issues and worries about losing sight of their larger editorial goals. It's too easy and too cheap to make another politically provocative cover story. It might make sense to totally stop writing political stories altogether for a bit to break the habit.
- smsm42 10y agoI think banning politics completely would be a mistake, but maybe I'm wrong. One of the bases for rational thinker is to admit one can be wrong, and to be open to change one's opinion according to available facts. So, from this POV running an experiment and seeing whether no politics makes it better or worse I think completely appropriate. Maybe it'll prove a big mistake - so we'd suffer for a whole week (oh horrors!) or maybe it won't be, and we'll learn something new.
- madaxe_again 10y agoI'm with you. Far too many technocrats simply go "politics are not my problem", and before you know it you've helped build a police state. If we discuss and use technology without considering it's ethical ramifications then we are on cruise control to hell. To those who will respond with "he said politics, not ethics" - prithee - where is the line? Stifling one angle of discussion stifles others.
- cryoshon 10y ago>and before you know it you've helped build a police state. this actually happened, as you know. "politics aren't my problem" should be called out as effectively authoritarian, as it's an admission that they'll do exactly as told.
- madaxe_again 10y agoIndeed - it has happened many times, and is happening now, precisely because the technocratic class wash their hands of politics and ethics, deferring responsibility infinitely upwards. I'm of the unpopular opinion that we should each take responsibility for our own actions, and should not act on orders we consider ethically unacceptable. I could tell you stories about a great uncle who designed dams in Austria...
- brianmurphy 10y ago>and before you know it you've helped build a police state. The hysteria of thinking that we (the US) are one or two steps away from a police state is exactly why I support the notion of political bans on my computer related news sites. And if you live in a country that is approaching a real police state, I would guess there are more appropriate locations for discussing your political situation than HN.
- gioele 10y ago> I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. I wonder why it is called an experiment at all. In the end this just the mods upholding the part of HN guidelines [1] that I like the most: If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. The problem with having stories and comments about mundane politics is also that they bury the technically interesting comments and they make stories on the the front page go away quicker. There are plenty of other sites where one can discuss about politics. Only on HN can one discuss, for example, with Animats (John Nagle) about the shortcomings and the history of the Nagle's algorithm [2,3] or getting lessons of public speaking from patio11 [4]. Mundane politic topics interfere with HN being the exception place it is. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9050645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9050645 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10608356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10608356 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6199544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6199544
- dang 10y agoThe HN guidelines say most politics are off-topic, not all. So we are talking about a change here, though I suppose it's a bigger change in our (peculiar) world than in most HN users'. Edit: but it's only a change for one week!
- Zenguitar777 10y agoI support political detox week in HN!! Great idea! I was just ready a story and someone got in a political jab and the comment thread was off to the races. I took refuge in HN to GET AWAY from the hateful and uncivilized ranting that other news sites tolerate. As cliche' as this might seem, it was once considered the height of politeness to leave your political and religious baggage on the front porch and not bring it to the dinner table!
- trowawee 10y agoJust for curiosity's sake, when exactly do you think it was considered polite to not talk about politics around the dinner table?
- finid 10y agoI couldn't upvote your comment fast enough. This whole idea about avoiding political discussions strikes me as very counter-productive. It reminds me of a quote attributed to a well-known person who once traveled these parts: Those who feel too intelligent to engage in politics will be governed by the less intelligent members of society. That's not the exact quote, but I think it captures it very well. More than at any other time, this is the time to be very engaged in political discussions, because our future is being decided right now. If intelligent people refuse to be part of that discussion, we won't like the result.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Jemaclus 10y agoAgree. I would argue that the "don't discuss politics or religion" with family and friends is partly what got us into this mess in the first place. The United States has become a nation where you can't have reasonable political discourse, because we've been taught not to talk about it. We put our heads in the sand and repeat our same beliefs over and over without any external challenge or validation. When we try to have a discussion, we're so ill-prepared and we're so entrenched in our positions that we're unable to talk rationally or civilly about the topics. I would argue that the opposite is necessary, as a general rule of discourse: we should calmly and confidently talk about politics with anyone and everyone. We should be able to have discussions about things like taxes, the military, and technology, without resorting to screaming and shouting names. One could make the argument that Hacker News is not a political forum, but I think explicitly discouraging political discourse is not healthy in the long run.
- klagermkii 10y agoI absolutely agree with this. What may have seemed like a good idea to avoid short-term arguments, has instead allowed differences to fester to a point where people barely even agree on the terminology used.
- imron 10y ago> I would argue that the "don't discuss politics or religion" with family and friends is partly what got us into this mess in the first place I don't think this is the problem. The problem is the echo chambers people surround themselves with (and tech companies explicitly try to cultivate) and a slowly dying news media desperate for views, and whipping up outrage in order to get them.
- Jemaclus 10y agoAnd how do you dissolve -- or mitigate the effects of -- an echo chamber? By discussing contradicting views with those around you. The media has no control over that.
- grzm 10y agoIf this is a topic you're interested in, I think you'll find Jonathan Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" particularly useful. I've read it through twice and it's helped me better understand the nature of the issue.
- ConfuciusSay02 10y agoAs long as it's only a week, I support it. But your distinction is a good one regarding partisan politics, vs politics in general. The tech community is already perceived as being out of touch, it's not going to help if we keep our head in the sand.
- lhorie 10y agoI get enough politics elsewhere. I'm looking forward to seeing how this experiment turns out.
- samstave 10y agoWell, this certainly trumps anything that Reddit is trying to do with out-right bans. They were like "Oh! BAM" A ban on /r/this and that. This election cycle felt like I was taking a lot of mesclin, ton of it too... Anyway, I like the non-political week. Anyway... that's just my two pence...
- c0nducktr 10y agoI don't believe reddit banned any subreddits. Did they?
- fjarlq 10y agoReddit banned /r/pizzagate 12 days ago for permitting doxing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Pizzagate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... I'm not aware of any other recent significant bans, so I don't know what user samstave means by ``They were like "Oh! BAM" A ban on /r/this and that.''
- cies 10y agoThis is actually quite a significant in my understanding. > [...] for permitting doxing Given how much DNC/HRC was promoted on Reddit, I do not accept that reason without second thought. Some basic "education by moderation" would have taught the sub not to dox while enjoying the conspiracy digging. For more info no that Pizzagate is about, see /r/conspiracy.
- samstave 10y agoIt was word play... no talk of politics and all that. Maybe you missed the jest in my post
- WheelsAtLarge 10y agoI agree 100%. Banning politics for any period of time just because it's not palatable to some does not mean that the world of politics has no value to hackers and entrepreneurs. Politics is a big part of the world and the real world matters. I've said it before and I say it again. Insulated geeks tend to created chat app # 1000 with little to no real world advantages over chat app #999. Putting our heads underground just because we don't like the real world does not help anyone. An example is the appointment of Myron Ebell to head the EPA. Purely political news but climate change is an important part of HN users. The advantage of having politics as part of the HN community is that we have a special view of how technology works and having a better view of the real world gives us a chance to better apply what we know. In my opinion, the fix is to mark then as political and give the user the choice to bypass them. Either as a prefix such as in "Tell HN" or to flag it as such via a clickable option. Putting a defacto policy against political news is a bad idea.
- samirm 10y agonot talking about a specific topic for a week does not mean it's getting banned forever...
- ianai 10y agoI don't think of it as an experiment. Just a quiet time to agree to focus on "hacking" and maybe remember there's more to life than politics.
- castratikron 10y agoTo quote rms, "Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone." Like it or not, politics affects all of us. We don't have anything to gain by ignoring it, and the more we ignore it, the easier it is for them to get away with things that are good for them and bad for us.
- andrewprock 10y agoWhere there are people, there is politics.
- sjg007 10y agoAgree, we should debate censorship!!
- GrinningFool 10y agoI see it more as "let's state that this isn't the appropriate forum for a political discussion for a week", as opposed to head-in-sand. I'm okay with it, but would've preferred it in the weeks leading up to the election - I've got plenty of places for political news and discussion; that's not why I come here.
- fredo699 10y agoPolitics is not what HN is about. This is an academic forum. If you want to talk politics, go elsewhere. This has been my position for a long time.
- OJFord 10y agoI too find this to be an argumentum ad absurdum. > The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity > and thoughtful conversation. > For one week, political stories are off-topic. That said, I can support: > Those things are lost when political emotions seize > control. This ban should be on political emotions seizing control; not on intellectual conversation surrounding political stories.
- dang 10y agoIn theory, yes, of course. In practice, that distinction doesn't hold up—not on the public internet and not at scale. The discussions are tribal. I'd be happy to say "No Tribalism on HN" but how would we enforce it and how could anyone comply? Tribalism is not something people have conscious control over.
- OJFord 10y agoFor many, HN is a source of news, not just conversation. Perhaps a reasonable compromise could be to 'close' comments on such stories, rather than removing the links altogether? In re your tribalism update - is 'tribalism' itself an issue? I don't think I personally mind someone being 'tribal' so long as their arguments are polite and reasoned.
- grzm 10y agoI think "tribal" in this case specifically connotes the lack of polite and reasoned argument.
- dang 10y ago> Perhaps a reasonable compromise could be to 'close' comments on such stories, rather than removing the links altogether? It's an interesting suggestion, and of course one that major media sites have run with. In an HN context, it feels to me like one of those 'easy' fixes that make short-term pain go away, but at the expense of something valuable in the long run. My sense is that, uncomfortable as it is, it's best to stay within the contradictory situation and look for small improvements. HN is in a position to do that where larger sites are not, so we might be able to make a contribution here.
- reflexive 10y agoI find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. To support your point, there's a press release circulating from Google and Facebook right now. They've launched a program to share hashes (fingerprints) through a database identifying offending ("extremist") content so it can be more efficiently removed from the web. Yet, we aren't allowed to comment on this - I just posted it and the story was flagged. There's a huge difference between saying "No more gratuitous flamebait about the US Election", and "no technical discussion permitted about any topic that could possibly be controversial." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110823
- dang 10y agoMaybe post it next week?
- grzm 10y agoPrediction of any discussion on this topic: - what's extremist? this is just going to be used to silence my particular views - this is anti-free speech - some mention how this is against net neutrality - some mention of Trump and the cabinet - some discussion on how Facebook is not taking ownership of the problem - Facebook echo chambers - diversity, racism, gender, safe places, identity politics (and likely bathrooms) - how this is needed to create a safer online community - something about how this ties in with the views of the MSM (and likely some misrepresentation of polls) - something about how this wouldn't be an issue if the results of the election would have been otherwise - something about the difference between the EC and the popular vote All of these points have been discussed ad nauseum in other threads with no appreciably constructive discussion. And for the life of me I can't think of any technical discussion that would be made on the topic other than possibly on how calculating all of these hashes/signatures isn't really going to be technically effective to catch everything. What's useful about that? mini-project idea: HN discussion generator, maybe markov chain based. Provide a topic, out comes a full-fledged HN-style discussion, complete with vote/flag estimates (not for posting to HN, of course)
- reflexive 10y ago
- imron 10y ago> avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand It's more like going on a week long vacation to a tropical island and deciding not to check email/go online for the entire time. The rest of the world will still be there when you get back, and you won't have missed anything substantive by unplugging while you were away.
- nextstep 10y agoDr. Seuss said it best: https://twitter.com/erikwithfriends/status/805885823900061704 https://twitter.com/erikwithfriends/status/80588582390006170...
- aswanson 10y agoThere as about 18 billion other places on the internet for useless political arguments. HN was much more informative and intellectually stimulating when the immune system response to even hints of political bickering was brutal and swift.
- dang 10y agoWhen was that, and can you link to examples? I don't remember it that way.
- tbihl 10y agoI'd suggest that the point of avoiding political discussion is not just because it's unpleasant or divisive. In my eyes, the problem is that politics has so much implicit back-end that it cannot be usefully discussed on an internet forum. In the several paragraphs (at most) that we write to another, we convey so little while disagreeing on so much. Besides that, there's the issue that we spend much of political discourse not actually explaining ourselves, but rather signaling to others what camp they should put us in. My wife and I, on several occasions each day, will say to one another, "we're describing two different things. We need to take this discussion far deeper, or end it altogether." That's the person with whom I talk more than any other person, and we aren't on the same page on divisive issues tens of times each week. Without unpacking an issue to a level far beyond the length of forum posts, we cannot possibly hope to be on the same page in our discussions here when they veer into politics. It's better to favor the format of discussing interesting issues about which most of us are unfamiliar. That way, we get fresh eyes thinking about the issue, more polite discourse, and a more educational experience.