5 ms·

Hacker News comments age about as well as Donald Trump's tweets regarding the Obama administration.

by jbigelow76 9y ago

muninn_ 9y ago
Why are you already introducing politics into this discussion?
- jMyles 9y ago
  > introducing politics Any discussion about company valuations is as political as a discussion about US elections. Pretending that "business" and "politics" and "technology" are separated by clearly discernible walls is itself toxic to discussions about any of them.
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    But politics are hardly relevant here. Somebody was pointing out interesting comments about Facebook and now I'm reading about Trump? It's low-quality material and has nothing to do with the discussion.
    - jMyles 9y ago
      I can understand your reaction, but I will say that it provoked an interesting thought in me. I think that the matter of how well material ages is an interesting and difficult-to-predict metric, and that it is quite interesting that we are now measuring this metric using the unit of tweets from one head-of-state about a former one.
      - muninn_ 9y ago
        Well I certainly wouldn't use it as a measurement. Why should we?
  - sethrin 9y ago
    That may or may not be the case (I would dispute it) but the rules here expressly place political discussions as off-topic. From what I have seen, banning accounts seems to be a last resort for people who post almost exclusively political attacks; one has to be fairly intent on making oneself unpleasant to raise attention. I tend to agree with you that there can be value to political debate, but we must abide by the rules of the forum.
    - jMyles 9y ago
      > but the rules here expressly place political discussions as off-topic This is absolutely untrue. How many times (and how many ways) does dang have to clarify this? Here's the guideline in question: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. I'm prepared to argue that a comparison of the aging process of HN comments to tweets from a current US President about a former one is an interesting and novel set of phenomena. And even if it weren't, I think that it's well outside the kinds of stories that are identified by the guideline as off-topic.
      - sethrin 9y ago
        I'm sure that there is some interesting technical work being done by various political participants. Tweets do not present novel technological problems; I'm not sure what the HN interest might be.
- taneq 9y ago
  Might as well get it over with. makes comparison to Hitler
  - alsetmusic 9y ago
    Citing "Godwin's Law" out of context is not useful to this discussion. For those unfamiliar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      Besides, Quirk's Exception and all that...
jshevek 9y ago
This is off topic, and strikes me as trolling.
dang 9y ago
There are ten million Hacker News comments, so obviously perceptions like this are a little prone to sample bias. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14936809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14936809 and marked it off-topic.

Hacker News comments age about as well as Donald Trump's tweets regarding the Obama administration.

muninn_ 9y ago

Why are you already introducing politics into this discussion?

jMyles 9y ago
> introducing politics Any discussion about company valuations is as political as a discussion about US elections. Pretending that "business" and "politics" and "technology" are separated by clearly discernible walls is itself toxic to discussions about any of them.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  But politics are hardly relevant here. Somebody was pointing out interesting comments about Facebook and now I'm reading about Trump? It's low-quality material and has nothing to do with the discussion.
  - jMyles 9y ago
    I can understand your reaction, but I will say that it provoked an interesting thought in me. I think that the matter of how well material ages is an interesting and difficult-to-predict metric, and that it is quite interesting that we are now measuring this metric using the unit of tweets from one head-of-state about a former one.
    - muninn_ 9y ago
      Well I certainly wouldn't use it as a measurement. Why should we?
- sethrin 9y ago
  That may or may not be the case (I would dispute it) but the rules here expressly place political discussions as off-topic. From what I have seen, banning accounts seems to be a last resort for people who post almost exclusively political attacks; one has to be fairly intent on making oneself unpleasant to raise attention. I tend to agree with you that there can be value to political debate, but we must abide by the rules of the forum.
  - jMyles 9y ago
    > but the rules here expressly place political discussions as off-topic This is absolutely untrue. How many times (and how many ways) does dang have to clarify this? Here's the guideline in question: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. I'm prepared to argue that a comparison of the aging process of HN comments to tweets from a current US President about a former one is an interesting and novel set of phenomena. And even if it weren't, I think that it's well outside the kinds of stories that are identified by the guideline as off-topic.
    - sethrin 9y ago
      I'm sure that there is some interesting technical work being done by various political participants. Tweets do not present novel technological problems; I'm not sure what the HN interest might be.
taneq 9y ago
Might as well get it over with. makes comparison to Hitler
- alsetmusic 9y ago
  Citing "Godwin's Law" out of context is not useful to this discussion. For those unfamiliar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    Besides, Quirk's Exception and all that...

jshevek 9y ago

This is off topic, and strikes me as trolling.

dang 9y ago

There are ten million Hacker News comments, so obviously perceptions like this are a little prone to sample bias. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14936809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14936809 and marked it off-topic.