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I prefer a politics-lite HN but as was discussed during the previous experiment, it's sometimes difficult to draw a line between what is political and what is n
by MrZongle2 10y ago
I prefer a politics-lite HN but as was discussed during the previous experiment, it's sometimes difficult to draw a line between what is political and what is not. I think the mods would be in a no-win situation were the moratorium repeated.
However, perhaps there's another solution.
If a "flag as political" capability were added to HN, along with the ability for users to show/hide political-flagged threads, it seems to me that users and the community as a whole could do most of the heavy lifting.
I realize that this raises the possibility for other flags (e.g. "can we have one just for X, so we don't have to see Y?") and with every supposedly simple modification there can be a legion of convoluted behind-the-scenes changes required; I hope I don't seem to be implying that such a change would be trivial. But perhaps in the interest of keeping the mods' workload down and discussions a tad more civil during what may be a particularly contentious next four years, it should be seriously considered.
- neximo64 10y agoThe main issue is also most people align to one side and it alienates the others.
- seertaak 10y ago> it's sometimes difficult to draw a line between what is political and what is not Fine, err on the side of caution. The thread that prompted my request had the word "Trump" in the title -- it's pretty clear which way that one's going to go.
- savethefuture 10y agoOff topic articles should be treated as Off topic articles, and removed. There should not be any need to update any system or change anything, just enforce the rules. This website is called Hacker News for a reason. Not Political News.
- MrZongle2 10y agoAn intersection of the political and the technical is not that unusual: PE Trump's meeting with industry leaders back in December is one such example. Likewise, the ongoing Manning & Snowden sagas tread ground in both territories. These are subjects that don't necessarily qualify as "off topic", but aren't as solidly technical as, say, announcement of a new Rust release or a disclosed software vulnerability.
- savethefuture 10y agoLike everything else, not everything will be perfect and mistakes will happen. Fine line articles are of course a grey area for the "off topic" rule but at least give us some semblance of maintaining the rules. For example, the few weeks before the election were total chaos, we should strive to not reach that point of political take over again.