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Agreed. As long as there's not a tech angle, I'm happy to see them off the site. Events like what's going on in Egypt are important, but it's not why I come he

by jschuur 16y ago

Agreed. As long as there's not a tech angle, I'm happy to see them off the site. Events like what's going on in Egypt are important, but it's not why I come here.

cabalamat 16y ago
Me neither, but you get a better class of conversation here than elsewhere. I don't object to political stories as long as they are (a) rare and (b) important ones.
- zeteo 16y ago
  I was a regular on Reddit until the fall of '08, when the politics started in earnest. Then the whole thing tumbled downwards. There's no faster way to turn a group of otherwise intelligent and reasonable people into a band of monkeys flinging poo at each other.
  - khafra 16y ago
    http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ Politics is a perfect storm of signaling where real-world consequences are almost completely divorced from argumentation. It's the opposite of hacking and startups, where assumptions and opinions are tested in the real world constantly, and feedback is quick and unambiguous.
- semanticist 16y ago
  Everyone thinks their personal pet political viewpoint, cause, issue, or ill-informed rant is important. If you allow some 'important' off-topic posts, you need to either have an externally-imposed decision on what's important (ie, a moderator who uses their idea of 'important'), or accept that you're going to see a stream of 'important' posts that you don't care about. As a community maintainer and moderator in the past, it's an issue I've struggled to get people to understand, as they all assumed that their pet issue was important enough that it didn't matter it was off-topic.
  - cabalamat 16y ago
    > Everyone thinks their personal pet political viewpoint, cause, issue, or ill-informed rant is important. It's not points-of-view that I'm describing as important, it's certain news stories. Does anyone doubt that the Egyptian revolution is a very important story in world affairs?
iuguy 16y ago
That's the thing, I don't think there needs to be a tech angle, but it does need to be interesting. For example, I posted a non-tech article about the world's most liberal prison, a prison island in Norway with a supermarket and cafeteria (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2209884 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2209884) because I thought it was an interesting and unique read others are unlikely to find. Of course, upvotes will tell as to whether this is a valid story.

by jschuur 16y ago

Agreed. As long as there's not a tech angle, I'm happy to see them off the site. Events like what's going on in Egypt are important, but it's not why I come here.

cabalamat 16y ago

Me neither, but you get a better class of conversation here than elsewhere. I don't object to political stories as long as they are (a) rare and (b) important ones.

zeteo 16y ago
I was a regular on Reddit until the fall of '08, when the politics started in earnest. Then the whole thing tumbled downwards. There's no faster way to turn a group of otherwise intelligent and reasonable people into a band of monkeys flinging poo at each other.
- khafra 16y ago
  http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ Politics is a perfect storm of signaling where real-world consequences are almost completely divorced from argumentation. It's the opposite of hacking and startups, where assumptions and opinions are tested in the real world constantly, and feedback is quick and unambiguous.
semanticist 16y ago
Everyone thinks their personal pet political viewpoint, cause, issue, or ill-informed rant is important. If you allow some 'important' off-topic posts, you need to either have an externally-imposed decision on what's important (ie, a moderator who uses their idea of 'important'), or accept that you're going to see a stream of 'important' posts that you don't care about. As a community maintainer and moderator in the past, it's an issue I've struggled to get people to understand, as they all assumed that their pet issue was important enough that it didn't matter it was off-topic.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  > Everyone thinks their personal pet political viewpoint, cause, issue, or ill-informed rant is important. It's not points-of-view that I'm describing as important, it's certain news stories. Does anyone doubt that the Egyptian revolution is a very important story in world affairs?

iuguy 16y ago

That's the thing, I don't think there needs to be a tech angle, but it does need to be interesting. For example, I posted a non-tech article about the world's most liberal prison, a prison island in Norway with a supermarket and cafeteria (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2209884 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2209884) because I thought it was an interesting and unique read others are unlikely to find. Of course, upvotes will tell as to whether this is a valid story.