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President Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey
- enraged_camel 9y agoLet's hope this one doesn't get flagged and buried by the aggressive "I want HN to be a tech-only news site" crowd, like the other article did. edit: to add more content, we may be witnessing history here. I think it would be a huge mistake for us to stick our heads in the sand in a misguided effort to avoid politicized discussions.
- chillwaves 9y agoWhich is unfortunate because I left work thinking I could catch up on the comments when I got home. I was wrong. Is there a way to find the old thread? I value the discussion this community has to offer. ETA: Thank you both
- pvg 9y agoThat's not why people flag these, I imagine.
- chillwaves 9y agoCare to imagine an alternative explanation?
- pvg 9y agoIt's regular news which is already listed as offtopic and worse, it's big, controversial political news which, for whatever reason, generates poor-quality discussion here. You don't have to believe HN is only for 'tech news' to think that.
- enraged_camel 9y ago>>It's regular news which is already listed as offtopic Um, no. the guidelines define "on-topic" as "anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." The fact that so many people upvoted the stories means there is an overwhelming desire to talk about them.
- pvg 9y agoYou're quoting half the guidelines. Right after they say "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." There are a zillion posts by moderators that go into great detail why 'lots of people upvoted it' is not a criterion for something being a good fit for the site.
- enraged_camel 9y agoYes, it says MOST stories about politics. Not all.
- pvg 9y agoYep, it's a little subjective. What I'm trying to tell you is that loudly berating people whose subjective views are different from your subjective views is a singularly ineffective way to convince them to see things your way.
- 9y ago
- pvg 9y agoYou're not doing your argument any favours by misrepresenting the reasons people might flag such stories and then basically calling people who have some other view on it blinkered and narrow-minded. I mean, think about it, that's not exactly an invitation to have a reasoned and enlightening discussion with you on some point of disagreement.
- gsylvie 9y ago1 hour ago thread is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304088 (Not sure why it's already down to 2nd page despite 408 points in 1 hour!)
- doubt_me 9y agoNobody cares about how corrupt the government is. Show me some more cool JavaScript products I'll never sign up for
- dang 9y agoHN doesn't run on upvotes alone; it's a constitutional democracy. The constitution is https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and this story is unconstitutional. If 500-point stories on hot topics were dispositive, HN would be a 500-point-stories-on-hot-topics site. It isn't that kind of site, and intervention is required to keep it from going that way. This is a clear case of 'if they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic', so it's worth dwelling on. It doesn't mean the story is unimportant (on the contrary), but that it doesn't fit the mandate of the site. Sometimes there are exceptions, and this isn't one. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14306111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14306111
- steve-benjamins 9y agoThis isn't great news. A Trump appointed FBI director will not be an improvement over Comey.
- pm90 9y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14304088
- mattnewton 9y agoPrevious thread pointed out the interesting fact that Trump fired FBI director Comey, who is heading an investigation against him, at the recommendation of Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from said investigation.
- savethefuture 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75SEy1qu71I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75SEy1qu71I
- hackuser 9y ago@dang, @sctb: Could you let your many users know the current HN policy on political articles? Obviously something is going on, it seems since (February?). Not being up front leads to frustration with wasted time on submissions and comments, and of course a bit of suspicion (e.g., is it supporting some political agenda?). I don't think people want to to reverse engineer your intentions; it's your site, just politely say what they are. I know the guidelines object to Most stories about politics ... unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon, but that is enforced very unevenly. The top story, last I looked, was about politics, as are many others. I know moderating is thankless, so many thanks. :) P.S. IMHO it would be useful to answer on the guidelines page or FAQ. Answers in a thread probably won't be seen by most readers; for all I know, you've already answered several times. EDIT: For those interested, here is some recent discussion of it by dang, but not really addressing this question directly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857086
- dang 9y agoThe policy has been the same since 2008. Most political stories are off-topic. Sometimes there are exceptions. The principle that guides exceptions is whether the story is 'deeply interesting', as originally described here: http://web.archive.org/web/20090206141746/http://ycombinator.com:80/newswelcome.html http://web.archive.org/web/20090206141746/http://ycombinator..., and still here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html.