7 ms·

Perhaps the better idea than suppressing politics would be to have a week where technological discussion is encouraged and actively highlighted?

dang 6y ago
Do you know the Monty Python line "God would see through a cheap ploy like that?" People would see through that and rip it to shreds the same way. Another thing I learned from that experiment is not to try experiments like that. Turns out it's bad to fuck with the firmware. Stability is really important. HN is a site for intellectually interesting stories and discussion. That includes some political discussion, as I've explained at the links above. This has always been the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.
- arduanika 6y ago
  I'm racking my brains and Google and can't seem to pull up which Monty Python sketch or movie that one comes from. Give a hint? Edit: Oh. Found it. In "Meaning of Life", uttered shortly after this musical number. NSFW and liable to cause religious / political flamewars, but it makes the point, so here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVHjg3AqIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVHjg3AqIQ . You can skip to 6:09 for the line.
  - dang 6y ago
    I'm impressed that you found that, given that my memory of the quote is inaccurate. I prefer my memory (don't we all).
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Wasn't the "cheap ploy" tried long ago with a week of Erlang? It probably didn't work as intended then either, but I'm curious if it's just the scale of HN that has changed, or if it's something else, that makes such an experiment seem even more out of the question now.
  - dang 6y ago
    It worked better than intended! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512280. I don't think the two cases are comparable really. One was a uniting move while the other turned out to be a dividing move, though we didn't mean it that way. I bet if we appealed to HN to band together against some Redditesque adversary today, it would work just as well as it did back then.
    - JNRowe 6y ago
      For those who are also curious¹, and the excellent linked topic². ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11 ² https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512291
krapp 6y ago
Nothing is stopping anyone from posting more of the kind of content they would rather see, as opposed to complaining about the content they would rather see less of. That said, Hacker News is about intellectual curiosity, and people can be intellectually curious about things other than technology. Even politics can clear that bar, although it very rarely does here.
threatofrain 6y ago
But isn't there already an official "clean" version of HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/classic https://news.ycombinator.com/classic
- jagger27 6y ago
  What's the difference?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    The stories seem a bit different - maybe it's an older rating algorithm?
  - dang 6y ago
    It's the same algorithm, but it only considers upvotes by users who registered before (checking the code...) December 13, 2008. That's astonishingly long ago—only (checking the data...) 1.5% of HN accounts existed back then. Yet the "classic" frontpage is not that different from the main frontpage. This was the main conclusion when pg launched the feature: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271, and again in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073513. What that tells me is that the forces creating the HN front page don't have much to do with changes in the userbase over time. That's a major finding, and I think to most people (me included, and pg probably included) a counterintuitive one.
    - ayewo 6y ago
      This is an excellent find! My memory is hazy but I probably found out about HN via Slashdot or via Michael Arrington's HN post [0] from Mar. 10, 2008; so I have been reading HN since before Dec. 13, 2008 and still come back because of some really good conversations that can be had here, compared to elsewhere on the Internet. 0: https://techcrunch.com/2008/03/10/little-known-hacker-news-is-my-first-read-every-morning/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/03/10/little-known-hacker-news-i...
thepasswordis 6y ago
Way way back in the day there used to be a sortof rate-limiting function of sorts where if too many people showed up and tried to talk politics, we'd post lots of stories about...arc, or lisp or something? I want to say it was arc because that's what the site is written in, but I can't remember. This would have been like 10 years ago or so.
- dang 6y ago
  Erlang, twice. Maybe someone else will find the links. I triggered the second Erlang day and it made pg mad at me for the one and only time that I'm aware of. That was before I was dang.
war1025 6y ago
Maybe politics keep popping up because it's a conversation that needs to happen? Maybe it pops up here because people have at least a modicum of hope that there will be a productive conversation even amongst the various downvote brigades? I post political comments because even when they get downvoted to -4, they still end up with a long list of replies and sub-tangents in response to them. I think that's a healthy thing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kortilla 6y ago
  > Maybe politics keep popping up because it's a conversation that needs to happen? What people want to do and what should be done are entirely different things.
  - rocqua 6y ago
    Big part of the difference is that one of them can be known.
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      What should be done is actually pretty obvious to historians, most of the time. (Future historians, that is.)
- dang 6y ago
  It definitely needs to happen. From my perspective the question is whether it needs to happen here on HN. The answer is yes and no, for the reasons I linked to above. There's an interesting dynamic to this, btw. If HN manages to stay a degree or two more interesting than internet median [1], it attracts high quality users. That makes it a desirable audience. That makes a lot of people want to target this audience, so they blast it with rhetoric. Rhetoric isn't curious conversation and it thrives on repetition—so it makes HN worse. In other words, to the degree that HN gets better, it gets worse. There's a cap on how good it can ever get [2]. [1] I'm not saying it's very good at this. But it's all relative, and what matters is outrunning the bear: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25725436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25725436. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16443431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16443431
Barrin92 6y ago
as has become more and more obvious over recent years in particular, technology and politics are intrinsically linked. Most obvious was always when topics like Urbit come up on HN. People's political and social views influence the technologies they built, be it clubhouse, or bitcoin or Parler. Even if the designers themselves may not even be aware of it. Okay I guess there's some exceptions, some dashboard tool isn't very political, but then again commenting on it is also not very interesting probably for that reason.

dang 6y ago

Do you know the Monty Python line "God would see through a cheap ploy like that?" People would see through that and rip it to shreds the same way. Another thing I learned from that experiment is not to try experiments like that. Turns out it's bad to fuck with the firmware. Stability is really important. HN is a site for intellectually interesting stories and discussion. That includes some political discussion, as I've explained at the links above. This has always been the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

arduanika 6y ago
I'm racking my brains and Google and can't seem to pull up which Monty Python sketch or movie that one comes from. Give a hint? Edit: Oh. Found it. In "Meaning of Life", uttered shortly after this musical number. NSFW and liable to cause religious / political flamewars, but it makes the point, so here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVHjg3AqIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVHjg3AqIQ . You can skip to 6:09 for the line.
- dang 6y ago
  I'm impressed that you found that, given that my memory of the quote is inaccurate. I prefer my memory (don't we all).
nitrogen 6y ago
Wasn't the "cheap ploy" tried long ago with a week of Erlang? It probably didn't work as intended then either, but I'm curious if it's just the scale of HN that has changed, or if it's something else, that makes such an experiment seem even more out of the question now.
- dang 6y ago
  It worked better than intended! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512280. I don't think the two cases are comparable really. One was a uniting move while the other turned out to be a dividing move, though we didn't mean it that way. I bet if we appealed to HN to band together against some Redditesque adversary today, it would work just as well as it did back then.
  - JNRowe 6y ago
    For those who are also curious¹, and the excellent linked topic². ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11 ² https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512291

krapp 6y ago

Nothing is stopping anyone from posting more of the kind of content they would rather see, as opposed to complaining about the content they would rather see less of. That said, Hacker News is about intellectual curiosity, and people can be intellectually curious about things other than technology. Even politics can clear that bar, although it very rarely does here.

threatofrain 6y ago

But isn't there already an official "clean" version of HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/classic https://news.ycombinator.com/classic

jagger27 6y ago
What's the difference?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Sebb767 6y ago
  The stories seem a bit different - maybe it's an older rating algorithm?
- dang 6y ago
  It's the same algorithm, but it only considers upvotes by users who registered before (checking the code...) December 13, 2008. That's astonishingly long ago—only (checking the data...) 1.5% of HN accounts existed back then. Yet the "classic" frontpage is not that different from the main frontpage. This was the main conclusion when pg launched the feature: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271, and again in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073513. What that tells me is that the forces creating the HN front page don't have much to do with changes in the userbase over time. That's a major finding, and I think to most people (me included, and pg probably included) a counterintuitive one.
  - ayewo 6y ago
    This is an excellent find! My memory is hazy but I probably found out about HN via Slashdot or via Michael Arrington's HN post [0] from Mar. 10, 2008; so I have been reading HN since before Dec. 13, 2008 and still come back because of some really good conversations that can be had here, compared to elsewhere on the Internet. 0: https://techcrunch.com/2008/03/10/little-known-hacker-news-is-my-first-read-every-morning/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/03/10/little-known-hacker-news-i...

thepasswordis 6y ago

Way way back in the day there used to be a sortof rate-limiting function of sorts where if too many people showed up and tried to talk politics, we'd post lots of stories about...arc, or lisp or something? I want to say it was arc because that's what the site is written in, but I can't remember. This would have been like 10 years ago or so.

dang 6y ago
Erlang, twice. Maybe someone else will find the links. I triggered the second Erlang day and it made pg mad at me for the one and only time that I'm aware of. That was before I was dang.

war1025 6y ago

Maybe politics keep popping up because it's a conversation that needs to happen? Maybe it pops up here because people have at least a modicum of hope that there will be a productive conversation even amongst the various downvote brigades? I post political comments because even when they get downvoted to -4, they still end up with a long list of replies and sub-tangents in response to them. I think that's a healthy thing.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kortilla 6y ago
> Maybe politics keep popping up because it's a conversation that needs to happen? What people want to do and what should be done are entirely different things.
- rocqua 6y ago
  Big part of the difference is that one of them can be known.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    What should be done is actually pretty obvious to historians, most of the time. (Future historians, that is.)
dang 6y ago
It definitely needs to happen. From my perspective the question is whether it needs to happen here on HN. The answer is yes and no, for the reasons I linked to above. There's an interesting dynamic to this, btw. If HN manages to stay a degree or two more interesting than internet median [1], it attracts high quality users. That makes it a desirable audience. That makes a lot of people want to target this audience, so they blast it with rhetoric. Rhetoric isn't curious conversation and it thrives on repetition—so it makes HN worse. In other words, to the degree that HN gets better, it gets worse. There's a cap on how good it can ever get [2]. [1] I'm not saying it's very good at this. But it's all relative, and what matters is outrunning the bear: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25725436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25725436. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16443431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16443431

Barrin92 6y ago

as has become more and more obvious over recent years in particular, technology and politics are intrinsically linked. Most obvious was always when topics like Urbit come up on HN. People's political and social views influence the technologies they built, be it clubhouse, or bitcoin or Parler. Even if the designers themselves may not even be aware of it. Okay I guess there's some exceptions, some dashboard tool isn't very political, but then again commenting on it is also not very interesting probably for that reason.