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So the previous comment is heavily down-voted but this bullshit and insult stays fine with the community? Somehow, I expected better from HN...

by kvark 12y ago

davidw 12y ago
Just flag off-topic, political articles like this. They always lead to bad discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fsloth 12y ago
  To quote from the guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." Politically, a direct evidence of a foreign sub entering the waters of sweden in the baltic sea is _not_ everyday news. The last time this happened was 30 years ago and it raised a hell of a shitstorm in the neighbouring countries. This will have consequences, if only in the public perception of things, for quite some time.
  - davidw 12y ago
    With that reasoning, you could still fill up the front page and exclude the actual hacker news entirely.
    - fsloth 12y ago
      I think the voting mechanism is there to filter unnecessary items away. To me, societies and politics are as 'hackable' or at least approachable with an engineering mindset as a e.g. a startup. They are a dynamic process in a physical world that are mostly guided by not-yet-mathematically-modeled rules and forces. As it is a turbulent system it's quite difficult to separate the wheat from chaff. I would claim there is a spectrum from 'populist troll of the month' to a historical event identified and remembered years onwards. I would claim, while perhaps not world shattering, the dynamics of this event will affect politics and will be remembered for at least for a while in a fairly significant region of thr world (unlike e.g. a council election in some local school would be).
      - davidw 12y ago
        You can have politics, or you can have a good site for startup discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530 You can't have both, as you'll start to get people like this, who will drive out the tech/science/startup stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8601779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8601779
        fsloth 12y ago
        I see your point... so no discussion on political events before they can be safely approached from the point of view of cool headed historical academic analysis?
        dang 12y ago
        The community is a single complex system; bad effects aren't localized. Fractiousness trains us all to drop civility and reflection, even on other topics. I think the Broken Windows Theory applies here. Flamewars blast all the windows. It's tempting to think that we could brawl on controversies and then switch back to politely discussing unikernels, sort of like how rugby teams go out together after bashing each other on the pitch. But after years of experience we know that that is beyond the capacity of this forum—probably because the social bonds here are weak. Failing to take that into account, because we want to have it all, would damage what we do have on HN.
        davidw 12y ago
        My favorite things to see that are not startups/tech are in-depth articles about little-known aspects of something. Articles where I learn a lot about some subject I previously knew little about, where the author is really sharing information instead of trying to convince us of something or another, or sharing their outrage over whatever (the world is full of horrible, outrageous events). A random one that comes to mind as a fascinating story is this one, although the English article does not really do it justice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Querini http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Querini
dang 12y ago
That comment was appalling and was killed, appropriately, by user flags. (The karma threshold for flagging is only 30, so you'll soon be able to do it yourself.) To the users who flagged it: thank you. Community members like you are helping HN get better. Please don't post comments like this, though, complaining about the relative status of comments or stories at some instant. These are off-topic and tedious, and nearly always turn out to be wrong in the end. It just takes a while for community action to balance out. If you see something inappropriate, here are better things to do: (1) downvote and/or flag if you can; (2) email hn@ycombinator.com, because we probably haven't seen it yet; (3) resist jumping to general conclusions about HN.

So the previous comment is heavily down-voted but this bullshit and insult stays fine with the community? Somehow, I expected better from HN...

by kvark 12y ago

So the previous comment is heavily down-voted but this bullshit and insult stays fine with the community? Somehow, I expected better from HN...

davidw 12y ago

Just flag off-topic, political articles like this. They always lead to bad discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

fsloth 12y ago
To quote from the guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." Politically, a direct evidence of a foreign sub entering the waters of sweden in the baltic sea is _not_ everyday news. The last time this happened was 30 years ago and it raised a hell of a shitstorm in the neighbouring countries. This will have consequences, if only in the public perception of things, for quite some time.
- davidw 12y ago
  With that reasoning, you could still fill up the front page and exclude the actual hacker news entirely.
  - fsloth 12y ago
    I think the voting mechanism is there to filter unnecessary items away. To me, societies and politics are as 'hackable' or at least approachable with an engineering mindset as a e.g. a startup. They are a dynamic process in a physical world that are mostly guided by not-yet-mathematically-modeled rules and forces. As it is a turbulent system it's quite difficult to separate the wheat from chaff. I would claim there is a spectrum from 'populist troll of the month' to a historical event identified and remembered years onwards. I would claim, while perhaps not world shattering, the dynamics of this event will affect politics and will be remembered for at least for a while in a fairly significant region of thr world (unlike e.g. a council election in some local school would be).
    - davidw 12y ago
      You can have politics, or you can have a good site for startup discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530 You can't have both, as you'll start to get people like this, who will drive out the tech/science/startup stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8601779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8601779
      - fsloth 12y ago
        I see your point... so no discussion on political events before they can be safely approached from the point of view of cool headed historical academic analysis?
        dang 12y ago
        The community is a single complex system; bad effects aren't localized. Fractiousness trains us all to drop civility and reflection, even on other topics. I think the Broken Windows Theory applies here. Flamewars blast all the windows. It's tempting to think that we could brawl on controversies and then switch back to politely discussing unikernels, sort of like how rugby teams go out together after bashing each other on the pitch. But after years of experience we know that that is beyond the capacity of this forum—probably because the social bonds here are weak. Failing to take that into account, because we want to have it all, would damage what we do have on HN.
        davidw 12y ago
        My favorite things to see that are not startups/tech are in-depth articles about little-known aspects of something. Articles where I learn a lot about some subject I previously knew little about, where the author is really sharing information instead of trying to convince us of something or another, or sharing their outrage over whatever (the world is full of horrible, outrageous events). A random one that comes to mind as a fascinating story is this one, although the English article does not really do it justice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Querini http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Querini

dang 12y ago

That comment was appalling and was killed, appropriately, by user flags. (The karma threshold for flagging is only 30, so you'll soon be able to do it yourself.) To the users who flagged it: thank you. Community members like you are helping HN get better. Please don't post comments like this, though, complaining about the relative status of comments or stories at some instant. These are off-topic and tedious, and nearly always turn out to be wrong in the end. It just takes a while for community action to balance out. If you see something inappropriate, here are better things to do: (1) downvote and/or flag if you can; (2) email hn@ycombinator.com, because we probably haven't seen it yet; (3) resist jumping to general conclusions about HN.