7 ms·

That kind of stuff has infected so much of modern discourse, if people want to talk about it there are plenty of forums for it. Why should we all stop what we'r

That kind of stuff has infected so much of modern discourse, if people want to talk about it there are plenty of forums for it. Why should we all stop what we're doing and prioritize discussing a niche political cause who's proponents have been blackmailing people everywhere into paying attention to them and have now come to dominate all sorts of forums and secure power, ironically with no benefit to the people they feign support for. And when people say they want it discussed, they don't mean they want to read diverse opinions, they just mean they want to see orthodoxy regurgitated.

dang 3y ago
Political threads often do go that way, and I understand the frustration. We don't want regurgitation—that follows from what we're trying to optimize for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... But the question of how to handle politics on HN is not simple. By the same principle of trying to optimize for curiosity, some content with political overlap is interesting and belongs here. The questions are which forms of it, how much, which particular links, etc.. I feel like after 10 years we arrived at a pretty coherent and stable general answer to that. Not that we get every specific call right—we don't. But the general principle has held up. For anyone wondering what I'm talking about, here are some past explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 (April 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 (Nov 2019) and some related points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 (July 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 (May 2018) and there are lots more at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... covering this.
- SkyMarshal 3y ago
  @dang I hope you write a book someday on everything you've learned as the main mod of HN for the past decade or however long you've been doing it. It would be an absolute treasure trove of how to manage public forums and social media, especially as it evolves from a small niche community to a larger one, maintaining as much of its original character as possible, and in a highly politicized, adversarial, and mis/dis-info saturated information environment. Would be a fascinating read.
  - Mountain_Skies 3y ago
    Hopefully he'd include an entire chapter on why he and HN failed so spectacularly at pretty much every turn during the pandemic, especially when it came to the lab leak theory discussions.
    - dang 3y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by failed spectacularly, but if I'm reading you right, then your comment is a good example of a reliable phenomenon: nearly everyone with strong passions on a political topic feels like HN is biased against, and even is suppressing, their position. (In one memorable case, the topic we were accused of suppressing was actually the single-most-discussed topic on HN by a long shot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962. That's how intensely these passions work: even the biggest story gets perceived as censored.) Let's look at the specific topic you mentioned. HN had plenty of discussions about the lab leak theory, starting in late 2020 and all through 2021. I've listed some below; there were others (and of course many more in 2022 and 2023). Some fell off the front page rather quickly but the biggest ones spent 15, 16, 18 hours on the front page. Everyone's memory about the pandemic has been retroactively revised by now, but as I recall it, the rehabilitation of the lab leak theory in (semi-)mainstream discourse began when Nicholas Wade published his article in the Bulletin. HN discussed that one thoroughly (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432) and there had been several major frontpage threads even before that. An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28582290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28582290 - Sept 2021 (307 comments) Scientists who signed Lancet letter about origins of Covid-19, have 2nd thoughts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27631560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27631560 - June 2021 (36 comments) The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27388587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27388587 - June 2021 (1062 comments) Wuhan lab staff sought hospital care before Covid-19 outbreak disclosed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953 - May 2021 (346 comments) The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 - May 2021 (537 comments) Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26750452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26750452 - April 2021 (618 comments) The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26609494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26609494 - March 2021 (209 comments) Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26540458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26540458 - March 2021 (985 comments) US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125145 - Feb 2021 (632 comments) Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25799858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25799858 - Jan 2021 (74 comments) Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25585833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25585833 - Dec 2020 (351 comments) (There of course were many threads arguing the opposite as well - I'm just listing these because they're the relevant ones for answering the GP. If this post makes you feel like HN was too supportive of and/or too suppressive of the opposite side, please re-read the first paragraph - it seems to work the same way in all cases.)
- dmvdoug 3y ago
  Since there was a snarky(ish??) comment about commenters quoting Socrates, I shall waste no time and jump myself to Aristotle: “Man is by nature a social animal” (Pol. 1253a). But note that that famous translation (“a social animal”) actually translates πολιτικὸν ζῷον (politikon zoon: political animal). Of course, for the ancient Greeks, politics meant something more expansive than it usually does for us. They were right. Politics, like time, is part of the human condition.
  - scns 3y ago
    When do politics begin? Three people.
    - vGPU 3y ago
      Ask three people a political question and you’ll get five opinions.
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Quick question for you: has there been any significant change in how HN handles the New York Times after 2019 specifically? Looking over my front page archive, that's one of the first big site-related shifts I've noticed, and it's quiet pronounced: 216 Year: 2007 333 Year: 2008 270 Year: 2009 202 Year: 2010 168 Year: 2011 184 Year: 2012 191 Year: 2013 271 Year: 2014 289 Year: 2015 362 Year: 2016 343 Year: 2017 396 Year: 2018 326 Year: 2019 83 Year: 2020 64 Year: 2021 67 Year: 2022 37 Year: 2023 I've not gone through to look at other domains specifically, but NYT typically shows up in the top 3--4 sites through 2019, then falls to #7 in 2020, #9 in 2021, and recovers to #5 in 2022. That's a pretty big movement as these things go.
  - philshem 3y ago
    Interesting. They had a major refactor of their paywall in August 2019. Maybe that turns people off to posting content that isn’t unique to the NYT. Or maybe paywalled articles are less likely to make the HN front page (?). https://open.nytimes.com/we-re-launched-the-new-york-times-paywall-and-no-one-noticed-5cd1f795f76b https://open.nytimes.com/we-re-launched-the-new-york-times-p...
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      Drilling in on my data by month, it looks as if July or August, 2019, was the switch-over, with another big hit in Dec 2019 / Jan 2020: 2018-1 ************************************************************************* 2018-2 ************************************************************ 2018-3 ********************************************** 2018-4 ********************************************************************* 2018-5 *********************************************************************** 2018-6 ******************************************************************* 2018-7 **************************************** 2018-8 ******************************************** 2018-9 **************************************************************** 2018-10 ************************************************* 2018-11 ***************************************************** 2018-12 **************************************************************** 2019-1 ************************************************ 2019-2 ************************************************* 2019-3 ************************************************ 2019-4 ******************************************************************* 2019-5 ******************************************************************* 2019-6 ***************************************************************** 2019-7 ****************************** 2019-8 ****************************************** 2019-9 ************************************************ 2019-10 ******************************************** 2019-11 *********************************** 2019-12 ******************************** 2020-1 ************ 2020-2 ************ 2020-3 ***************** 2020-4 ************ 2020-5 ******* 2020-6 ******* 2020-7 ************ 2020-8 ************ 2020-9 ******* 2020-10 ******************* 2020-11 ******** 2020-12 ***************** (July seems to be an annual slump in HN -- NYT submissions for some reason, which confounds analysis somewhat.) (Apologies to mobile readers ;-)
deleted 3y ago
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lackinnermind 3y ago
[flagged]
arp242 3y ago
You can just not read these stories? Or even hide them? I wasn't really interested in all those Reddit stories last month either, mostly because they were all exactly the same wankfest. So I just hid them. Problem solved. As long as the frontpage isn't overrun with these kind of stories every day I don't really see the problem. Even when restricted to purely technical topics – and HN is NOT for purely technical topics – there's will always be heaps of stories you won't be interested in for one reason or the other, and that's fine.
- philwelch 3y ago
  The problem is that it’s not just limited to the stories; people in the comments frequently go on annoying or inflammatory tangents.
  - arp242 3y ago
    I agree, but that's a bit of different thing, and not limited to these kind of topics.
  - cwillu 3y ago
    The “[–]” button is a Good Thing™.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    I'd prefer a block function, but the HN community (when searching old topics) seems very against it, and the one block extension I found is Chrome only. But In the meantime I guess I just minimize a topic when that happens.
    - arp242 3y ago
      Here's my HN block extension for Firefox: https://gist.github.com/arp242/3159b9cbbbe148c786e1ca10adaaea61 https://gist.github.com/arp242/3159b9cbbbe148c786e1ca10adaae... Also includes some other things like changed styling and whatnot; it's not really "for publication" and some tweaking may be required, but here it is. Load it manually via about:debugging. You need to load a post by clicking on the date, and then you can click "bozo" or "block": the "bozo" just marks the post as someone being a "bozo" but doesn't block it. This is useful because everyone can have a bad day or whatever, and that's fine. It's people who consistently seem to be having "bad days" that are the problem – unfortunately there's a small group of highly prolific posters that I find consistently unpleasant, and with just ~20-30 people hidden like this (some of whom really ought to be banned IMHO) I found HN becomes a significantly better experience. The main problem I have with this is that I can no longer flag or rebuff their posts (whichever may apply), so these people become the proverbial "missing stairs" if everyone starts doing it :-/
spondylosaurus 3y ago
I don't think "women in tech" is a niche political cause... and this is a tech forum.
- teh_klev 3y ago
  How did you arrive at "women in tech" as a niche from the parent comment? It doesn't mention this. And I agree, women in tech hasn't been a niche political cause for at least 10-15 years, possibly longer.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    HN user belfalas, quoting the linked New Yorker article: > When stories that focus on structural barriers faced by women in the workplace, or on diversity in tech, or on race or masculinity... Then, HN user version_five in reply: > Why should we all stop what we're doing and prioritize discussing a niche political cause...
    - teh_klev 3y ago
      Ah, apologies, I didn't further enough up the comment tree.
  - kergonath 3y ago
    It looks like a misplaced reply, to be fair.
- subsistence234 3y ago
  women in tech care about tech
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dang 3y ago

Political threads often do go that way, and I understand the frustration. We don't want regurgitation—that follows from what we're trying to optimize for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... But the question of how to handle politics on HN is not simple. By the same principle of trying to optimize for curiosity, some content with political overlap is interesting and belongs here. The questions are which forms of it, how much, which particular links, etc.. I feel like after 10 years we arrived at a pretty coherent and stable general answer to that. Not that we get every specific call right—we don't. But the general principle has held up. For anyone wondering what I'm talking about, here are some past explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 (April 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 (Nov 2019) and some related points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 (July 2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 (May 2018) and there are lots more at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... covering this.

SkyMarshal 3y ago
@dang I hope you write a book someday on everything you've learned as the main mod of HN for the past decade or however long you've been doing it. It would be an absolute treasure trove of how to manage public forums and social media, especially as it evolves from a small niche community to a larger one, maintaining as much of its original character as possible, and in a highly politicized, adversarial, and mis/dis-info saturated information environment. Would be a fascinating read.
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  Hopefully he'd include an entire chapter on why he and HN failed so spectacularly at pretty much every turn during the pandemic, especially when it came to the lab leak theory discussions.
  - dang 3y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by failed spectacularly, but if I'm reading you right, then your comment is a good example of a reliable phenomenon: nearly everyone with strong passions on a political topic feels like HN is biased against, and even is suppressing, their position. (In one memorable case, the topic we were accused of suppressing was actually the single-most-discussed topic on HN by a long shot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962. That's how intensely these passions work: even the biggest story gets perceived as censored.) Let's look at the specific topic you mentioned. HN had plenty of discussions about the lab leak theory, starting in late 2020 and all through 2021. I've listed some below; there were others (and of course many more in 2022 and 2023). Some fell off the front page rather quickly but the biggest ones spent 15, 16, 18 hours on the front page. Everyone's memory about the pandemic has been retroactively revised by now, but as I recall it, the rehabilitation of the lab leak theory in (semi-)mainstream discourse began when Nicholas Wade published his article in the Bulletin. HN discussed that one thoroughly (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432) and there had been several major frontpage threads even before that. An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28582290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28582290 - Sept 2021 (307 comments) Scientists who signed Lancet letter about origins of Covid-19, have 2nd thoughts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27631560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27631560 - June 2021 (36 comments) The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27388587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27388587 - June 2021 (1062 comments) Wuhan lab staff sought hospital care before Covid-19 outbreak disclosed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953 - May 2021 (346 comments) The origin of Covid: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27071432 - May 2021 (537 comments) Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26750452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26750452 - April 2021 (618 comments) The WHO-China search for the origins of the coronavirus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26609494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26609494 - March 2021 (209 comments) Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26540458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26540458 - March 2021 (985 comments) US raises ‘deep concerns’ over WHO report on Covid’s Wuhan origins - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125145 - Feb 2021 (632 comments) Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of Covid-19’s origin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25799858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25799858 - Jan 2021 (74 comments) Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25585833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25585833 - Dec 2020 (351 comments) (There of course were many threads arguing the opposite as well - I'm just listing these because they're the relevant ones for answering the GP. If this post makes you feel like HN was too supportive of and/or too suppressive of the opposite side, please re-read the first paragraph - it seems to work the same way in all cases.)
dmvdoug 3y ago
Since there was a snarky(ish??) comment about commenters quoting Socrates, I shall waste no time and jump myself to Aristotle: “Man is by nature a social animal” (Pol. 1253a). But note that that famous translation (“a social animal”) actually translates πολιτικὸν ζῷον (politikon zoon: political animal). Of course, for the ancient Greeks, politics meant something more expansive than it usually does for us. They were right. Politics, like time, is part of the human condition.
- scns 3y ago
  When do politics begin? Three people.
  - vGPU 3y ago
    Ask three people a political question and you’ll get five opinions.
dredmorbius 3y ago
Quick question for you: has there been any significant change in how HN handles the New York Times after 2019 specifically? Looking over my front page archive, that's one of the first big site-related shifts I've noticed, and it's quiet pronounced: 216 Year: 2007 333 Year: 2008 270 Year: 2009 202 Year: 2010 168 Year: 2011 184 Year: 2012 191 Year: 2013 271 Year: 2014 289 Year: 2015 362 Year: 2016 343 Year: 2017 396 Year: 2018 326 Year: 2019 83 Year: 2020 64 Year: 2021 67 Year: 2022 37 Year: 2023 I've not gone through to look at other domains specifically, but NYT typically shows up in the top 3--4 sites through 2019, then falls to #7 in 2020, #9 in 2021, and recovers to #5 in 2022. That's a pretty big movement as these things go.
- philshem 3y ago
  Interesting. They had a major refactor of their paywall in August 2019. Maybe that turns people off to posting content that isn’t unique to the NYT. Or maybe paywalled articles are less likely to make the HN front page (?). https://open.nytimes.com/we-re-launched-the-new-york-times-paywall-and-no-one-noticed-5cd1f795f76b https://open.nytimes.com/we-re-launched-the-new-york-times-p...
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    Drilling in on my data by month, it looks as if July or August, 2019, was the switch-over, with another big hit in Dec 2019 / Jan 2020: 2018-1 ************************************************************************* 2018-2 ************************************************************ 2018-3 ********************************************** 2018-4 ********************************************************************* 2018-5 *********************************************************************** 2018-6 ******************************************************************* 2018-7 **************************************** 2018-8 ******************************************** 2018-9 **************************************************************** 2018-10 ************************************************* 2018-11 ***************************************************** 2018-12 **************************************************************** 2019-1 ************************************************ 2019-2 ************************************************* 2019-3 ************************************************ 2019-4 ******************************************************************* 2019-5 ******************************************************************* 2019-6 ***************************************************************** 2019-7 ****************************** 2019-8 ****************************************** 2019-9 ************************************************ 2019-10 ******************************************** 2019-11 *********************************** 2019-12 ******************************** 2020-1 ************ 2020-2 ************ 2020-3 ***************** 2020-4 ************ 2020-5 ******* 2020-6 ******* 2020-7 ************ 2020-8 ************ 2020-9 ******* 2020-10 ******************* 2020-11 ******** 2020-12 ***************** (July seems to be an annual slump in HN -- NYT submissions for some reason, which confounds analysis somewhat.) (Apologies to mobile readers ;-)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lackinnermind 3y ago

[flagged]

arp242 3y ago

You can just not read these stories? Or even hide them? I wasn't really interested in all those Reddit stories last month either, mostly because they were all exactly the same wankfest. So I just hid them. Problem solved. As long as the frontpage isn't overrun with these kind of stories every day I don't really see the problem. Even when restricted to purely technical topics – and HN is NOT for purely technical topics – there's will always be heaps of stories you won't be interested in for one reason or the other, and that's fine.

philwelch 3y ago
The problem is that it’s not just limited to the stories; people in the comments frequently go on annoying or inflammatory tangents.
- arp242 3y ago
  I agree, but that's a bit of different thing, and not limited to these kind of topics.
- cwillu 3y ago
  The “[–]” button is a Good Thing™.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I'd prefer a block function, but the HN community (when searching old topics) seems very against it, and the one block extension I found is Chrome only. But In the meantime I guess I just minimize a topic when that happens.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Here's my HN block extension for Firefox: https://gist.github.com/arp242/3159b9cbbbe148c786e1ca10adaaea61 https://gist.github.com/arp242/3159b9cbbbe148c786e1ca10adaae... Also includes some other things like changed styling and whatnot; it's not really "for publication" and some tweaking may be required, but here it is. Load it manually via about:debugging. You need to load a post by clicking on the date, and then you can click "bozo" or "block": the "bozo" just marks the post as someone being a "bozo" but doesn't block it. This is useful because everyone can have a bad day or whatever, and that's fine. It's people who consistently seem to be having "bad days" that are the problem – unfortunately there's a small group of highly prolific posters that I find consistently unpleasant, and with just ~20-30 people hidden like this (some of whom really ought to be banned IMHO) I found HN becomes a significantly better experience. The main problem I have with this is that I can no longer flag or rebuff their posts (whichever may apply), so these people become the proverbial "missing stairs" if everyone starts doing it :-/

spondylosaurus 3y ago

I don't think "women in tech" is a niche political cause... and this is a tech forum.

teh_klev 3y ago
How did you arrive at "women in tech" as a niche from the parent comment? It doesn't mention this. And I agree, women in tech hasn't been a niche political cause for at least 10-15 years, possibly longer.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  HN user belfalas, quoting the linked New Yorker article: > When stories that focus on structural barriers faced by women in the workplace, or on diversity in tech, or on race or masculinity... Then, HN user version_five in reply: > Why should we all stop what we're doing and prioritize discussing a niche political cause...
  - teh_klev 3y ago
    Ah, apologies, I didn't further enough up the comment tree.
- kergonath 3y ago
  It looks like a misplaced reply, to be fair.
subsistence234 3y ago
women in tech care about tech

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]