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Something that people around here seem to assume is that there's no malice in the things people post here. Yes! Absolutely true, and one of the best things ab

Something that people around here seem to assume is that there's no malice in the things people post here. Yes! Absolutely true, and one of the best things about HN. Comments are generally judged for their content, rather than by who posted them. I think it's their inability to recognize politics when they see it. I'm able to recognize politics when I'm looking for it. But again, I enjoy participating in a community where I generally don't have to care about politics. There's generally very little drama on HN. Honestly, I think the experiments you're doing with poll/epoll are really quite interesting and I enjoy reading about them. But the associated drama/agenda/conspiracy-theory stuff? I could do without having to trawl through that.

zedshaw 16y ago
This is how people take advantage of you I'm afraid. There's a class of member of every community that knows you try to take each comment and person at their face value, and then uses that against you to shape your opinion. I know this, because I also did it for years, and sometimes even professionally. If you aren't careful and check what people say or check on who they are, you can get conned into believing something that's not true. So, fact check what people say, even me. Don't believe things I say just because you see my articles on here all the time. The actual quality of the person and their hidden agendas and biases matter much more than what they actually say.
- abstractbill 16y ago
  Honestly, I find I'm a lot happier if I act like there's no politics, even if I know deep down there probably is some of that happening. You've alluded in other comments to being the kind of person who enjoys the game of politics. I'm just not like that myself - I find that kind of thing really quite dull. If HN ever became more about the personalities than the content, I wouldn't bother "checking up on who people are" or seeing if what they say is shaped by some weird agenda. I'd just leave.

zedshaw 16y ago

This is how people take advantage of you I'm afraid. There's a class of member of every community that knows you try to take each comment and person at their face value, and then uses that against you to shape your opinion. I know this, because I also did it for years, and sometimes even professionally. If you aren't careful and check what people say or check on who they are, you can get conned into believing something that's not true. So, fact check what people say, even me. Don't believe things I say just because you see my articles on here all the time. The actual quality of the person and their hidden agendas and biases matter much more than what they actually say.

abstractbill 16y ago
Honestly, I find I'm a lot happier if I act like there's no politics, even if I know deep down there probably is some of that happening. You've alluded in other comments to being the kind of person who enjoys the game of politics. I'm just not like that myself - I find that kind of thing really quite dull. If HN ever became more about the personalities than the content, I wouldn't bother "checking up on who people are" or seeing if what they say is shaped by some weird agenda. I'd just leave.