I frequent several private FB groups that cover a wide range of topics. Like technology, politics, and cars. I find that if you seek out specific groups of enthusiastic people who share your passions (but not neccesarily your perspective) the discussion is usually more insightful and respectful. You basically need to get off of main street and step into a little coffee shop to hear the gossip behind the gossip. Where else would these populist punchlines be coming from if not from passionate groups of people who actually put thought into things and talk about them.
Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?
101–110 of 241 posts
Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?
#102I mostly stay here. The amount of political and economic discussion here is what I personally consider enough in my life; I don't think looking for more sources would improve SNR for me. I sometimes like to peruse Reddit for some well-defined topics - the trick is to find an appropriate subreddit for it. So, for instance, when I want to follow SpaceX news, I'll tune in to /r/spacex, because quite a lot of people ther…
The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral. The civility here is often arrived at by burying comments that challenge this self-serving slant. Or by an algorithm that systematically buries articles and users (whose accounts accrue ranking penalties) that generate any heated debate by challenging the slant. W…
I agree. I think most people come here for a business / political angle on tech, not just for tech itself. I also often notice that the best discussions disappear really fast here.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?
#103I'd say Reddit. There are some heavy moderated subreddits for insightful discussions, like reddit.com/r/truereddit. Because Reddit has a voting system like HN, quality content is being upvoted and shown as first. If you search you can probably find some more subreddits with less general content. And HN is of course a really great website for such discussions, with a lot of highly intelligent people that post quite le…
Agreed. There are several heavily modded subreddits for this. /r/neutralpolitics, /r/neutralnews, /r/truereddit, etc/
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Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?
#104I mostly stay here. The amount of political and economic discussion here is what I personally consider enough in my life; I don't think looking for more sources would improve SNR for me. I sometimes like to peruse Reddit for some well-defined topics - the trick is to find an appropriate subreddit for it. So, for instance, when I want to follow SpaceX news, I'll tune in to /r/spacex, because quite a lot of people ther…
The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral. The civility here is often arrived at by burying comments that challenge this self-serving slant. Or by an algorithm that systematically buries articles and users (whose accounts accrue ranking penalties) that generate any heated debate by challenging the slant. W…
These are all "ego-involving topics" here, to borrow an excellent phrase from the parent comment. I'd say most of the time, predicting HN's reaction to a topic or even a specific comment is easy and almost makes the comments section superfluous at this point for certain topics.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?
#105Something Awful, D&D forum. Maybe not insightful but at least civil. $10 accounts mean being a shithead has consequences.
I think most of the forums on SA are filled with great people. AI is the best car forum on the 'net and BFC is pretty awesome too.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?
#106I mostly stay here. The amount of political and economic discussion here is what I personally consider enough in my life; I don't think looking for more sources would improve SNR for me. I sometimes like to peruse Reddit for some well-defined topics - the trick is to find an appropriate subreddit for it. So, for instance, when I want to follow SpaceX news, I'll tune in to /r/spacex, because quite a lot of people ther…
The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral. The civility here is often arrived at by burying comments that challenge this self-serving slant. Or by an algorithm that systematically buries articles and users (whose accounts accrue ranking penalties) that generate any heated debate by challenging the slant. W…
Silent downvotes right on schedule!
I think civil and honest discussion would be better served without the anonymous down-votes. One can still retain privacy with a pseudonym.
I find it ironic that Hacker News is not Hackable! The most important thing about HN, its ranking algorithm and reputation system (karma), is closed and not hackable in any way. I know HN wishes it could come up with a better algorithm, and even pg wrote about the need and how HN will need to evolve (I can't find that post of his right now). What better way to come up with a better way than to let its userbase of hackers hack away at it? If the API exposed votes, there would be a blossoming of alternate front pages and comment rankings.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?
#107Something Awful, D&D forum. Maybe not insightful but at least civil. $10 accounts mean being a shithead has consequences.
Eh, even then, there's still tons of shitheads on there. The $10 barrier is not that strong, and the community is kinda balls anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?
#108I mostly stay here. The amount of political and economic discussion here is what I personally consider enough in my life; I don't think looking for more sources would improve SNR for me. I sometimes like to peruse Reddit for some well-defined topics - the trick is to find an appropriate subreddit for it. So, for instance, when I want to follow SpaceX news, I'll tune in to /r/spacex, because quite a lot of people ther…
The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral. The civility here is often arrived at by burying comments that challenge this self-serving slant. Or by an algorithm that systematically buries articles and users (whose accounts accrue ranking penalties) that generate any heated debate by challenging the slant. W…
> The civility here is often arrived at by burying comments that challenge this self-serving slant.
This is where I have to disagree. I feel the civility comes from swift and brutal downvotes of low effort contributions.
If there's a pattern that I see amongst grey/flagged/dead comments is that they are most often off-topic and/or low effort.
Not to say that groupthink doesn't exist or come into play, just that it's not the prevailing cause for burying comments.
Well to me at least. After all, I'm just a single user that reads arbitrary threads, I have no data to reinforce my opinion.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?
#109Let me answer a different question: where do you go for civil, insightful commentary? I recommend gathering a group of "morning cup of coffee" people with an intellectual bent. This works particularly well among more academic neighborhoods, but can be done elsewhere. Get 3-10 people you know (or get to know these people) that are generally aware of the world, from different walks of life/professions, and start meetin…
You mean he should get out of his house? Isn't it dangerous?
Not necessarily. There's a growing trend of finding "mastermind" groups to have group skype chats with once or twice a week. They're great because you're not limited by geography. They're terrible because even the most antisocial introvert needs some human contact. :)
Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
/.'s moderation system sort of gives you this, but not the connection to the authors of the posts. You set a score threshold for visibility. The discussion system hides things below the threshold, but doesn't hide the thread itself (like reddit does, IIRC). * (Score: 5) Some stuff * (Score: 0) *Hidden* * (Score: 4) Actually, if you read ... * (Score: -1) *Hidden* * (Score: 3) Blah blah blah Posts are also moderated b…
/. used to have a "friends and foes" feature, which is more or less as described. I think you could set +1 or -1 for friends foes friends-of-friends friends-of-foes foes-of-friends foes-of-foes I had a few "foes" set to -1, to attempt to filter out some frequent, crazy commenters. But I stopped reading the site when extreme opinions became the only opinions.
It's really strange how far most group moderation systems have regressed from Slashdot's features. The algorithms are more powerful now but users have a lot less control. It's like they used to say about ALGOL-60: it was a significant improvement on its successors.