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>There's another argument too, although I quake a bit at bringing it up. Suppose the truly extreme, end-of-world scenario really is coming to pass. What contrib
by slg 9mo ago
>There's another argument too, although I quake a bit at bringing it up. Suppose the truly extreme, end-of-world scenario really is coming to pass. What contribution do we make by jettisoning HN's mandate, going to war and turning the site into a battlefield, sooner rather than later? How do more posts of angry denunciations and screaming at each other move the needle on the end of the world?
This is spoken like a mere observer. The benefit of "jettisoning HN's mandate" is to prevent the worst case scenario that you depict. You and HN have power. Some of the richest and most powerful people in this country and on this planet look at this website. These stories being on the front page and people reading the comments can actually lead to change which could decrease the odds of true disaster.
People need to stop pretending that the internet isn't real. This ordeal in Minnesota is in large part because a Youtuber showed up at preschools demanding to see children because he believed some conspiracy he saw on the internet. The stuff said on the internet does have real world ramifications and I'm frankly shocked how someone in your position that has seen the world change to the degree that is has in your time as the moderator here is still falling back to the "profoundly pointless triviality of the internet message board".
- dang 9mo agoThat's helpful in that it clarifies a difference in assumptions. I don't believe that HN, or its admins, have anything like the power you're attributing to it/us. We're basically janitors. That's not a criticism. I understand how a perception like what you're expressing can arise, but it can only arise from afar.
- slg 9mo agoAlex Pretti was a nurse. What power did he have? I'm not attributing ultimate power over the fate of the nation to you or HN. You are a tiny cog in a huge machine, but you're still a bigger cog than me. So I'm asking you to consider when you will use the power you do have. Current events should have us all considering that question
- defrost 9mo agoIt's a mistake to think that deep pocket YC investors will suddenly become aware of current events that otherwise escaped their notice if only current event stories made it to "the front page of HN". Another mistake would be to think that [flagged] and down weighted submissions do not get many many eyeballs and that C-suits of large SV and other tech companies don't take part.
- slg 9mo agoEvery reminder that powerful people see that the status quo is unacceptable has value. It's also obvious that a post being flagged reduces the number of people who will see that post, that's the whole purpose of flagging.
- tomhow 9mo agoIf it's really true that "some of the richest and most powerful people in this country and on this planet look at this website", what do we want them to see here? Do we want them to see enraged people saying the same things that they keep hearing over and over and thus dismiss as background noise? Or do we want them to see intelligent, thoughtful people having sophisticated discussions and making new points that might give them pause and provoke them to think about things in a different way?
- slg 9mo agoWe were discussing post level moderation and not comment level moderation. I'm suggesting the site allow more politics, I'm not condoning abandoning all the site’s rules. I don't think the level of discourse in the comments is being improved by the current level of post level moderation. The most noticeable impact is simply prompting tangents into the post level moderation itself like it did here which arguably lowers the level of discourse.
- tomhow 9mo agoLet's be honest: you're doing much more than "suggesting". The whole reason we can't have these posts on the front page is that the comments in the threads so frequently break the guidelines and turn the site into a place that repels people who want to have thoughtful discussions. So there is no yet-known way to have our cake and eat it; the presence of these stories on the front page means abandoning the site's rules, because so many commenters are unable discuss them in a way that respects the site's rules. And the outcome of this is that it pushes HN towards being irrelevant, precisely because these discussions offer so little that powerful people would find persuasive. I would love it if HN could be the very best place for discussing difficult topics and be a place where we really could push politics in the right direction. That can't happen if the discussions about the most important topics rapidly devolve into easily-ignored background noise.