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Oh my heavens no. There are certain topics that even this site can't discuss in good faith without groupthink, hurt feelings, big egos, and so forth. No, I will

Oh my heavens no. There are certain topics that even this site can't discuss in good faith without groupthink, hurt feelings, big egos, and so forth. No, I will not list those topics here to avoid invoking them, but most of them are political. Sometimes they get just as toxic as twitter and reddit, just with less namecalling since that'll get you flagged off with a quickness. On that note: If even HN can't do it, I think some of these topics can't be discussed online at all. Here you've got great moderation, a high SNR, and vanishingly few of the pathologies that infest most web fora. Almost everything else is a step down in quality.

jerf 5y ago
"If even HN can't do it, I think some of these topics can't be discussed online at all." They can be, just not in a any format where anyone can post, let's say, 10 paragraphs of whatever, and then hundreds of people can jam their 40 paragraph rebuttals and threats right underneath it. While convenient for many purposes, the formats where the interactions are this tight and integrated are not the only formats. You need something more like a weblog-structured community, where people can post their lengthy thoughts at their leisure, and others can post their own rebuttals on their own weblogs, but I think it's actually important that there not be tight integration such that everyone is getting a phone notification every time someone posts some link to them. I would agree that online platforms that stick everyone into one metaphorical mosh pit have certain topics that simply can't be discussed reasonably, but "metaphorical mosh pit" isn't the only option.