5 ms·

Honestly dang, I'm seeing mostly not thoughtful substantive commentary here, just ideological battling. Which is a shame because this is certainly a topic it's

Honestly dang, I'm seeing mostly not thoughtful substantive commentary here, just ideological battling. Which is a shame because this is certainly a topic it's possible to do that on (e.g. this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43105417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43105417 ). Are the good comments really worth the large amount of heat?

afpx 2y ago
I'm seeing a lot of helpful discussion, and I'm learning a lot. It's been easy for me to skip over the hyperbole.
- concordDance 2y ago
  When I made that post this was in the main branch (e.g. starting at top comment and going down you hit this before any leaf): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43103830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43103830
  - nobankai 2y ago
    But every thing stated in the comment you linked is provably true. It's certainly concerning, but I can't see a single statement they made with a dubious basis in truth. Are there any parts that you think violate the guidelines specifically?
    - squigz 2y ago
      It doesn't matter if every part of it is factually true or not - it doesn't add anything to the discussion.
      - concordDance 2y ago
        Yeah, this. It substantially worsens the heat/light ratio of ensuing discussion and adds little. Trump is not an obscure topic. "Trump lies all the time" is not a novel statement people won't have encountered and considered before, if someone already believes "Trump lies all the time" then that sentence tells them nothing new and if they don't believe it the post is hardly going to change their mind.
    - hector126 2y ago
      The first sentence begins with "Trump lies through his teeth with every word" Love him or hate him, I would argue that there are indeed words Trump has spoken which are not lies made through his teeth. I would put that level of hyperbole within the realm of "dubious basis in truth".
      - kelnos 2y ago
        Oh c'mon, that's just silly. That statement is so clearly rhetorical hyperbole that it doesn't need to pass any standard of truth. Trump lies. A lot. That is provably true. "Trump lies through his teeth with every word" is a reasonable hyperbolic expression of that truth.
        hector126 2y ago
        They literally said "provably true". Trump absolutely lies a lot. He doesn't lie _all the time_. I don't think that's an inappropriate level of nuance for someone to acknowledge.
dang 2y ago
In this case I think the answer is probably yes, it's worth it. This thread turned out to be better than the median for political threads these days, which of course is a low bar. (I agree with you that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43103830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43103830 is the opposite of what we want here). HN is split between users who passionately want more political discussion and users who don't want HN to be overrun with politics (or flamewars). The former are more vocal but the latter are more numerous. (How do I know that? Because if it weren't the case, i.e. if the majority of HN wanted all these political threads on the front page, the pressure to do this would be far greater than it is, intense though it has been.) The community is always split between readers who feel like "all stories on $Topic are being suppressed, this site is censored!" and readers who feel like "Hacker News is overrun with $Topic! This site should change its name to $Topic News!". How to balance out these conflicting vectors is an interesting optimization problem. I say interesting because the obvious solutions don't work. For example, some people feel like the moderators should just declare politics off-topic on HN—but that would actually politicize the site even more (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785637). Fortunately we worked out a strategy that has held up well over the years. Here are a couple recent posts that cover it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42614703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42614703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 ... and there's 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....

afpx 2y ago

I'm seeing a lot of helpful discussion, and I'm learning a lot. It's been easy for me to skip over the hyperbole.

concordDance 2y ago
When I made that post this was in the main branch (e.g. starting at top comment and going down you hit this before any leaf): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43103830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43103830
- nobankai 2y ago
  But every thing stated in the comment you linked is provably true. It's certainly concerning, but I can't see a single statement they made with a dubious basis in truth. Are there any parts that you think violate the guidelines specifically?
  - squigz 2y ago
    It doesn't matter if every part of it is factually true or not - it doesn't add anything to the discussion.
    - concordDance 2y ago
      Yeah, this. It substantially worsens the heat/light ratio of ensuing discussion and adds little. Trump is not an obscure topic. "Trump lies all the time" is not a novel statement people won't have encountered and considered before, if someone already believes "Trump lies all the time" then that sentence tells them nothing new and if they don't believe it the post is hardly going to change their mind.
  - hector126 2y ago
    The first sentence begins with "Trump lies through his teeth with every word" Love him or hate him, I would argue that there are indeed words Trump has spoken which are not lies made through his teeth. I would put that level of hyperbole within the realm of "dubious basis in truth".
    - kelnos 2y ago
      Oh c'mon, that's just silly. That statement is so clearly rhetorical hyperbole that it doesn't need to pass any standard of truth. Trump lies. A lot. That is provably true. "Trump lies through his teeth with every word" is a reasonable hyperbolic expression of that truth.
      - hector126 2y ago
        They literally said "provably true". Trump absolutely lies a lot. He doesn't lie _all the time_. I don't think that's an inappropriate level of nuance for someone to acknowledge.

dang 2y ago

In this case I think the answer is probably yes, it's worth it. This thread turned out to be better than the median for political threads these days, which of course is a low bar. (I agree with you that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43103830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43103830 is the opposite of what we want here). HN is split between users who passionately want more political discussion and users who don't want HN to be overrun with politics (or flamewars). The former are more vocal but the latter are more numerous. (How do I know that? Because if it weren't the case, i.e. if the majority of HN wanted all these political threads on the front page, the pressure to do this would be far greater than it is, intense though it has been.) The community is always split between readers who feel like "all stories on $Topic are being suppressed, this site is censored!" and readers who feel like "Hacker News is overrun with $Topic! This site should change its name to $Topic News!". How to balance out these conflicting vectors is an interesting optimization problem. I say interesting because the obvious solutions don't work. For example, some people feel like the moderators should just declare politics off-topic on HN—but that would actually politicize the site even more (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785637). Fortunately we worked out a strategy that has held up well over the years. Here are a couple recent posts that cover it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42614703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42614703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 ... and there's 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....