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“HN isn't a place for general political arguments” I wish we’d stop lying to ourselves about this.

by dvtrn 7y ago

thedance 7y ago
"we" aren't lying about it to ourselves. It's enforced from the top down because VCs (such as the benefactors of this site) strongly prefer that their founders ignore culture and society to focus 100% on business. The lack of politics on HN is not some kind of community consensus.
- macintux 7y ago
  Or perhaps because political arguments online are 99.9999% ineffective at changing anything, and 99.9999% effective at causing discord. I assume someone, somewhere was once swayed by a random stranger to change their mind, but it doesn't happen often enough to outweigh the costs.
- dang 7y ago
  HN has plenty of political, cultural, and social threads. I'm surprised you haven't noticed them. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22714705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22714705 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 for more explanation. Political topics take over everything if you let them, so we have to moderate HN to prevent it from becoming all-politics-all-flamewar-all-the-time. Do you think we should just let it burn? Nobody's trying to "enforce" anyone to "focus 100% on business". I do worry whether users' addictions to sites like this keep them from doing better things.
Der_Einzige 7y ago
Yeah that rule is extremely stupid. Please do what you can to make the mods and admins realize that this rule should be removed. Politics is fascinating. HN is absolutely a good forum for it and it already is basically unenforced.
- dang 7y ago
  What rule are you referring to?
  - Der_Einzige 7y ago
    Not to post political stuff on HN
    - dang 7y ago
      There's no such rule. I've written about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and in lots of previous places: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20political%20overlap&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... If anyone has a question that I haven't addressed in there, let me know and I'll be happy to answer.
      - macintux 7y ago
        The guideline for comments I was leaning on to try to cut short what seemed like inevitable political ugliness: > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for.
        dang 7y ago
        For sure, but curious conversation on political topics is possible, and is not battle. It depends on whether one is posting thoughtfully or just trying to smite enemies. That's the zone that we hope HN threads will inhabit when addressing politicized topics. Of course it's unstable and frequently deteriorates, hence all the moderation comments we end up having to post. But I don't know of a better alternative. As I explained at the links mentioned upthread, we can't ban all politics and we can't just let such threads run raw either.

“HN isn't a place for general political arguments” I wish we’d stop lying to ourselves about this.

by dvtrn 7y ago

“HN isn't a place for general political arguments” I wish we’d stop lying to ourselves about this.

"we" aren't lying about it to ourselves. It's enforced from the top down because VCs (such as the benefactors of this site) strongly prefer that their founders ignore culture and society to focus 100% on business. The lack of politics on HN is not some kind of community consensus.

macintux 7y ago
Or perhaps because political arguments online are 99.9999% ineffective at changing anything, and 99.9999% effective at causing discord. I assume someone, somewhere was once swayed by a random stranger to change their mind, but it doesn't happen often enough to outweigh the costs.
dang 7y ago
HN has plenty of political, cultural, and social threads. I'm surprised you haven't noticed them. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22714705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22714705 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 for more explanation. Political topics take over everything if you let them, so we have to moderate HN to prevent it from becoming all-politics-all-flamewar-all-the-time. Do you think we should just let it burn? Nobody's trying to "enforce" anyone to "focus 100% on business". I do worry whether users' addictions to sites like this keep them from doing better things.

Der_Einzige 7y ago

Yeah that rule is extremely stupid. Please do what you can to make the mods and admins realize that this rule should be removed. Politics is fascinating. HN is absolutely a good forum for it and it already is basically unenforced.

dang 7y ago
What rule are you referring to?
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  Not to post political stuff on HN
  - dang 7y ago
    There's no such rule. I've written about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and in lots of previous places: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20political%20overlap&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... If anyone has a question that I haven't addressed in there, let me know and I'll be happy to answer.
    - macintux 7y ago
      The guideline for comments I was leaning on to try to cut short what seemed like inevitable political ugliness: > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for.
      - dang 7y ago
        For sure, but curious conversation on political topics is possible, and is not battle. It depends on whether one is posting thoughtfully or just trying to smite enemies. That's the zone that we hope HN threads will inhabit when addressing politicized topics. Of course it's unstable and frequently deteriorates, hence all the moderation comments we end up having to post. But I don't know of a better alternative. As I explained at the links mentioned upthread, we can't ban all politics and we can't just let such threads run raw either.