3 ms·

Ah, you must be new here. This site is the epitome of "don't bring politics into tech". It's a policy that really needs an overhaul for the modern world.

dang 6y ago
That is far from true and always has been (or at least since 2008). We briefly tested a 'no politics' rule in late 2016 but that was purely as an experiment just to see what would happen, and we quickly reverted it. The issue for HN is not that politics are off topic or "don't bring politics into tech", as if these two things could be kept distinct to begin with. It's that internet forums have a strong tendency to devolve into flamewar. Political flamewar will quickly take over the site if allowed to. That would destroy HN for its mandate, which is to gratify intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). So we can't just not moderate such threads. Excluding politics is not an option either, for a bunch of reasons. One is that many of the topics that get discussed here have a strong political overlap. It wouldn't serve intellectual curiosity to exclude those. Therefore we need a more complex approach that includes some political topics and discussions while excluding others. I've written many explanations of exactly what our approach is and how we've worked it out over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20political%20overlap&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869, which shows how far back political discussion goes on HN, as well as the argument about politics on HN. If you (or anyone) take a look at those past explanations and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd very much like to know what it is. It's been a while since I've heard a question that isn't covered by the approach we've worked out, which makes me feel like that approach is the right one for this site. There are a lot of constraints on this problem, given HN's intended purpose, the dynamics of the internet, the political world, and current social trends. It's a bit of a miracle that any solution exists at all, and I have a hunch that the one we've found may literally be the only one possible.

dang 6y ago

That is far from true and always has been (or at least since 2008). We briefly tested a 'no politics' rule in late 2016 but that was purely as an experiment just to see what would happen, and we quickly reverted it. The issue for HN is not that politics are off topic or "don't bring politics into tech", as if these two things could be kept distinct to begin with. It's that internet forums have a strong tendency to devolve into flamewar. Political flamewar will quickly take over the site if allowed to. That would destroy HN for its mandate, which is to gratify intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). So we can't just not moderate such threads. Excluding politics is not an option either, for a bunch of reasons. One is that many of the topics that get discussed here have a strong political overlap. It wouldn't serve intellectual curiosity to exclude those. Therefore we need a more complex approach that includes some political topics and discussions while excluding others. I've written many explanations of exactly what our approach is and how we've worked it out over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20political%20overlap&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902396. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869, which shows how far back political discussion goes on HN, as well as the argument about politics on HN. If you (or anyone) take a look at those past explanations and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd very much like to know what it is. It's been a while since I've heard a question that isn't covered by the approach we've worked out, which makes me feel like that approach is the right one for this site. There are a lot of constraints on this problem, given HN's intended purpose, the dynamics of the internet, the political world, and current social trends. It's a bit of a miracle that any solution exists at all, and I have a hunch that the one we've found may literally be the only one possible.