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Please keep in mind that making something a divisive topic is a specific and intentional strategy for suppressing speech.

consumer451 1y ago
By my count, a very effective strategy.
dang 1y ago
The topics I'm talking about are genuinely divisive, in the sense of large groups of people opposing each other and feeling passionately.
- thrance 1y ago
  I don't think "paracetamol doesn't cause autism" is a divisive topic, nor should it ever be. By letting these articles be buried, I believe HN is fostering a culture where lies and misinformations are held to the same standard as actual facts. And in my experience, this seriously degrades the experience of browsing this website.
  - dang 1y ago
    It's not a question of what "should" be a divisive topic. Every topic in all the major politically-determined topic sets is divisive, and the proof is what happens in the threads when people try to discuss them. Acetominophen might not have been a divisive topic before it got politically charged, but it is now. It's not the moderators' job to decide what's true and impose that decision on everyone else. The community would hate it if we tried to run HN that way—it's probably one of the few things that political enemies would come together and agree on. We don't have a truth meter [1]. It's the community's job to sort out what's true and false. It's the mods' job to (try to) ensure that people (try to) do that through thoughtful, respective conversation rather than flamewar, snark, or attacks, in keeping with the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. It's easy and all too satisfying to imagine that if the mods would simply impose your idea (<-- I don't mean you personally, but any of us) of what's true and false, what's lies and misinformation, etc., then the site would get magically and massively better. However, different users have radically different sets of what they consider true vs. lies—why should we select one and not another? This would just be a different way of imposing our own viewpoint on the community. It's not our temperament to do that, and as I mentioned, the community would never tolerate it. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22truth%20meter%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

consumer451 1y ago

By my count, a very effective strategy.

dang 1y ago

The topics I'm talking about are genuinely divisive, in the sense of large groups of people opposing each other and feeling passionately.

thrance 1y ago
I don't think "paracetamol doesn't cause autism" is a divisive topic, nor should it ever be. By letting these articles be buried, I believe HN is fostering a culture where lies and misinformations are held to the same standard as actual facts. And in my experience, this seriously degrades the experience of browsing this website.
- dang 1y ago
  It's not a question of what "should" be a divisive topic. Every topic in all the major politically-determined topic sets is divisive, and the proof is what happens in the threads when people try to discuss them. Acetominophen might not have been a divisive topic before it got politically charged, but it is now. It's not the moderators' job to decide what's true and impose that decision on everyone else. The community would hate it if we tried to run HN that way—it's probably one of the few things that political enemies would come together and agree on. We don't have a truth meter [1]. It's the community's job to sort out what's true and false. It's the mods' job to (try to) ensure that people (try to) do that through thoughtful, respective conversation rather than flamewar, snark, or attacks, in keeping with the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. It's easy and all too satisfying to imagine that if the mods would simply impose your idea (<-- I don't mean you personally, but any of us) of what's true and false, what's lies and misinformation, etc., then the site would get magically and massively better. However, different users have radically different sets of what they consider true vs. lies—why should we select one and not another? This would just be a different way of imposing our own viewpoint on the community. It's not our temperament to do that, and as I mentioned, the community would never tolerate it. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22truth%20meter%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...