3 ms·

Ask HN: Can we stop with the political posts?

As a reminder, most political posts are considered off-topic.

not_your_vase 2y ago
It's either this, or a post about the 2589th revolutionary AI service that will summarize your meetings and pimp your CV. Year 2024-5 is like that. Pick your poison.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  We could use another Erlang Day. https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11
- DamonHD 2y ago
  Or a woman who has allegedly eaten nothing but orange pips since she was 3 or something, while hustlin' apps to summarise CVs... The boundary between 'political' and not is hard to pin down though - articles that are clearly driven by or imbued with (say) culture war viewpoints or anti-corporate or ... or ... even if not explicitly political or about politics? We have an eye-roller or two of different kinds within a few posts of this one.
legitster 2y ago
I get it. But also HN's comment guidelines are so good that they encourage some of the most interesting comments I find on any given news article. So while I agree that anytime Musk tweets something it's not particularly relevant to tech - on the other hand I found some of the discussion about Trudeau's resignation very enlightening and one of the more civil threads anywhere on the internet. Proposal for HN: have a tab for discussion of major world news, and instead of allowing retread posts for the same news again and again every time there's a new source, limit it to something canonical like the Current Events portal on Wikipedia.
josefritzishere 2y ago
I find HN is generally very thoughtful about what political content is relevant, and what is appropriate to coment on that content. However... I've very tired of the Musk content. He's become a highly poltitical highly divisive figure who doesnt need the airtime.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
  Yeah. I have him uBO-ed at home but when I occasionally look at HN from work (extensions not allowed) I am annoyed by the cruft.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
on_the_train 2y ago
Rules only apply to the things that are disliked. It's the usual selective enforcement so prevalent with jurisdiction as well.
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  I don't think so. I've seen things on here I completely politically align with but find tiresome and overused, even flagging some of it.
jmclnx 2y ago
If you mean stop submitting articles that are purely political, I fully agree. But these days in the US, all science articles will spawn political comments. That is because in the US, there are many politicians refuting proven scientific facts. Especially in regards to Climate Change. So here we are.
krapp 2y ago
>As a reminder, most political posts are considered off-topic. So are meta posts like this. If you don't like a post, you can simply not participate in the discussion, or flag it if you think it's off topic. But asking everyone else to change their behavior to suit your liking is a pointless waste of time.
- DamonHD 2y ago
  People are asked not to post SPAM (eg penis pills and crypto), or porn or warez or worse, indeed insist on it, so why is political polemic categorically different? Real question: I'm not sure how I'd draw the line algorithmically for example.
  - krapp 2y ago
    In this case I think it's the polemics which are the problem, not the politics. It's fine if people don't want polemics, rancor, bad faith, all that nonsense, but those aren't unique to political threads. Being opposed to politics per se is just personal taste, and arguing about matters of personal taste doesn't make for insightful or interesting reading. Also, and maybe more pertinently, the train has kind of left the station. People want to talk politics, they're going to talk politics, and no one is going to stop them from talking politics. Dang tried to ban politics entirely once and it was a disaster. Asking people to just stop posting political threads is as useless as asking people to stop posting about AI.
dang 2y ago
As you say and as the guidelines say (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), most political stories are off topic. But most != all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426 (Dec 2012) The question is where to draw the line, but it's clear the line can't be "no political stories at all". We tried that as an experiment once and what we learned is that (1) nobody can agree about what counts as a 'political' story; (2) introducing that question just leads to even more politicization of the site; and (3) there exist stories that are clearly on topic for HN and yet have political overlap. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251 (Dec 2016) So what we settled on was a slightly-better-articulated version of the status quo ante, which is: some (but not most) stories with political overlap are ok on HN; the question "which ones specifically are ok?" is generally answered by: the ones that have some intellectual interest that isn't just partisan, plus significant-enough new information so that the discussion doesn't automatically turn completely repetitive. Here's a link to many past explanations of this over the years: 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.... If you (or anyone) read some of those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. Finally, people should understand that this question hasn't just come up recently—it goes back as far as the site itself. Lots of examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 (May 2018)
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  Thanks @dang > the question "which ones specifically are ok?" is generally answered by: the ones that have some intellectual interest that isn't just partisan, plus significant-enough new information so that the discussion doesn't automatically turn completely repetitive But, as far as I can tell, this is what we're seeing. And also but, as you seem to imply, how can you tell? Honestly I don't have a good answer nor do I expect you to. I like to use HN as an escape from all that even though I'm completely guilty of engaging in the same politically driven nonsense I find so appalling and tiresome. Maybe the only answer is that we have to constantly remind ourselves to act and respond in good faith, with honesty.
9999px 2y ago
Literally everything is political.
throw_me_uwu 2y ago
"Just" don't engage with them. A more technical solution is to make a custom feed that filters out what you don't like. I have a script that generates an html file, sorting posts to tiers based on domain or keywords. Just as an example the shitty tier posts are now: bbc, wsj, vox, arstechnica; the top tier: itch.io, twitter, arxiv, github. Any posts from rare domains get into top tier, posts from frequent domains to middle tier. So it's mostly sorted to my preferences.
pastapliiats 2y ago
Everything is political
grimblee 2y ago
Everything is political, should we stop posting altogether ?

As a reminder, most political posts are considered off-topic.

It's either this, or a post about the 2589th revolutionary AI service that will summarize your meetings and pimp your CV. Year 2024-5 is like that. Pick your poison.

Jtsummers 2y ago
We could use another Erlang Day. https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11
DamonHD 2y ago
Or a woman who has allegedly eaten nothing but orange pips since she was 3 or something, while hustlin' apps to summarise CVs... The boundary between 'political' and not is hard to pin down though - articles that are clearly driven by or imbued with (say) culture war viewpoints or anti-corporate or ... or ... even if not explicitly political or about politics? We have an eye-roller or two of different kinds within a few posts of this one.

legitster 2y ago

I get it. But also HN's comment guidelines are so good that they encourage some of the most interesting comments I find on any given news article. So while I agree that anytime Musk tweets something it's not particularly relevant to tech - on the other hand I found some of the discussion about Trudeau's resignation very enlightening and one of the more civil threads anywhere on the internet. Proposal for HN: have a tab for discussion of major world news, and instead of allowing retread posts for the same news again and again every time there's a new source, limit it to something canonical like the Current Events portal on Wikipedia.

josefritzishere 2y ago

I find HN is generally very thoughtful about what political content is relevant, and what is appropriate to coment on that content. However... I've very tired of the Musk content. He's become a highly poltitical highly divisive figure who doesnt need the airtime.

OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
Yeah. I have him uBO-ed at home but when I occasionally look at HN from work (extensions not allowed) I am annoyed by the cruft.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

on_the_train 2y ago

Rules only apply to the things that are disliked. It's the usual selective enforcement so prevalent with jurisdiction as well.

brodouevencode 2y ago
I don't think so. I've seen things on here I completely politically align with but find tiresome and overused, even flagging some of it.

jmclnx 2y ago

If you mean stop submitting articles that are purely political, I fully agree. But these days in the US, all science articles will spawn political comments. That is because in the US, there are many politicians refuting proven scientific facts. Especially in regards to Climate Change. So here we are.

krapp 2y ago

>As a reminder, most political posts are considered off-topic. So are meta posts like this. If you don't like a post, you can simply not participate in the discussion, or flag it if you think it's off topic. But asking everyone else to change their behavior to suit your liking is a pointless waste of time.

DamonHD 2y ago
People are asked not to post SPAM (eg penis pills and crypto), or porn or warez or worse, indeed insist on it, so why is political polemic categorically different? Real question: I'm not sure how I'd draw the line algorithmically for example.
- krapp 2y ago
  In this case I think it's the polemics which are the problem, not the politics. It's fine if people don't want polemics, rancor, bad faith, all that nonsense, but those aren't unique to political threads. Being opposed to politics per se is just personal taste, and arguing about matters of personal taste doesn't make for insightful or interesting reading. Also, and maybe more pertinently, the train has kind of left the station. People want to talk politics, they're going to talk politics, and no one is going to stop them from talking politics. Dang tried to ban politics entirely once and it was a disaster. Asking people to just stop posting political threads is as useless as asking people to stop posting about AI.

dang 2y ago

As you say and as the guidelines say (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), most political stories are off topic. But most != all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426 (Dec 2012) The question is where to draw the line, but it's clear the line can't be "no political stories at all". We tried that as an experiment once and what we learned is that (1) nobody can agree about what counts as a 'political' story; (2) introducing that question just leads to even more politicization of the site; and (3) there exist stories that are clearly on topic for HN and yet have political overlap. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251 (Dec 2016) So what we settled on was a slightly-better-articulated version of the status quo ante, which is: some (but not most) stories with political overlap are ok on HN; the question "which ones specifically are ok?" is generally answered by: the ones that have some intellectual interest that isn't just partisan, plus significant-enough new information so that the discussion doesn't automatically turn completely repetitive. Here's a link to many past explanations of this over the years: 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.... If you (or anyone) read some of those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. Finally, people should understand that this question hasn't just come up recently—it goes back as far as the site itself. Lots of examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 (May 2018)

brodouevencode 2y ago
Thanks @dang > the question "which ones specifically are ok?" is generally answered by: the ones that have some intellectual interest that isn't just partisan, plus significant-enough new information so that the discussion doesn't automatically turn completely repetitive But, as far as I can tell, this is what we're seeing. And also but, as you seem to imply, how can you tell? Honestly I don't have a good answer nor do I expect you to. I like to use HN as an escape from all that even though I'm completely guilty of engaging in the same politically driven nonsense I find so appalling and tiresome. Maybe the only answer is that we have to constantly remind ourselves to act and respond in good faith, with honesty.

9999px 2y ago

Literally everything is political.

throw_me_uwu 2y ago

"Just" don't engage with them. A more technical solution is to make a custom feed that filters out what you don't like. I have a script that generates an html file, sorting posts to tiers based on domain or keywords. Just as an example the shitty tier posts are now: bbc, wsj, vox, arstechnica; the top tier: itch.io, twitter, arxiv, github. Any posts from rare domains get into top tier, posts from frequent domains to middle tier. So it's mostly sorted to my preferences.

pastapliiats 2y ago

Everything is political

grimblee 2y ago

Everything is political, should we stop posting altogether ?