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On Twitter, tptacek specifically suggested a hard ban on politics as an example of more restrictive guideslines. What makes me uneasy about this is that there'
by dfranke 16y ago
On Twitter, tptacek specifically suggested a hard ban on politics as an example of more restrictive guideslines. What makes me uneasy about this is that there's a huge gray area surrounding what qualifies as politics. For example, I don't regard tptacek's recent comments about the market for talent as politics, but a lot of people probably would. If we ban politics, then petty squabling over politics will be replaced by petty squabbling over censorship each time the mods kill a thread which is only borderline political.
- pmjordan 16y agoI can't decide on my opinion of the politics (especially economic policy) submissions. I appreciate some of them, but I can't help but feel most of them are the same regurgitated crap that just happens to get a lot of votes. Presumably these (votes and submissions) are from people who agree with the article, not necessarily because they think it's a valuable new contribution. The best I can think of is to tag them as such and weight them differently. How? I don't know. We don't really have enough information about who votes for what to make guesses like that. (And I'm fully aware that weighting some votes higher than others could easily be seen as elitism)
- bugsy 16y agoI like the current guidelines which I'll summarize as "interesting things of interest to hackers." I agree that "7 degrees of reddit" or whatever is bending the rules too much. Something like a hard ban on politics might lose things that are of interest. For example, what role are technical tools playing in the arabic revolutions right now? Obviously Wikileaks, reddit, youtube, twitter and facebook are playing major roles. And what role are hackers playing? Assange, Anonymous, and the Egyptian Google guy are all using technical skills to create worldwide revolution. That's pretty exciting, using technology to make political change. But should discussing it be banned? Is it necessary to ban that to get rid of the various latest cop shooting incidents reposted from reddit where technology is at most a minor role.
- tptacek 16y agoNot only do I think a lot of the "how technology is changing the Middle East" comments shouldn't be on the front page, but so does Paul Graham; he manually buried a bunch of them last week, despite hugely high ratings.
- bugsy 16y agoNow THAT'S politics.
- tptacek 16y agoThat's a semantic game. We all know what the word "politics" in the site guidelines means.
- bugsy 16y agoSo the articles are interesting and have huge ratings so they are of interest to hackers and they are about technology, but one person with power decides he doesn't want to see the topic discussed, so he squashes all discussion with the thumb of a dictator who must not be questioned. How is this not politics.
- tptacek 16y agoJust so everyone's clear, the mighty-thumbed dictator we're talking about here is Paul Graham.
- dwwoelfel 16y agoHow do you know that he manually buried them?
- tptacek 16y ago(a) Because he did it before with TSA stories. (b) Because one minute there was a 200+ story at the top of the page less than a day old, and the next minute there was no such story at the top of the new page, and yet the story hadn't been flagged.