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Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

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Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#51

Post by hood_syntax »

creshal wrote: post #18
hood_syntax wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have much slimmer pickings if you're a conservative IMO, it doesn't matter if the platform leans left as long as it fosters constructive and open discussion. You're correct that a lot of the heavy handed moderation (censorship?) is on popular communities that trend left, but that's just a money related trend imo. Companies want to make their product a "safe" platform for investors

Throwing rights under the bus in the pursuit of money is now leftist? I hope we have Karl Marx' corpse wired up to a generator.

> Throwing rights under the bus in the pursuit of money is now leftist?

It's not that it's leftist. It's that the people online tend to lean leftwards, and people investing in online communities want to grab the largest portion of the available population.

I will say, however, that the left in the US (namely the Democratic party) certainly seems to be willing to pursue a lot in the name of money (like taking millions of dollars from corporate and financial lobbying), and a lot of leftists online are totally okay with creating echochambers (though that's certainly not their pursuit alone).

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#52

Post by username3 »

gunn wrote: post #17

I've been wondering: would it be practical to build a reddit/HN like system where the comments you see are by authors you've upvoted before, or authors they've upvoted before? This way everyone can comment, and the low effort jokes etc. can still exist but you personally only see them if that's what you enjoy. Currently we give every comment a single universal score. It's hard to come up with a simple set of rules th…

Twitter's timeline shows replies of people you follow.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#53

Post by dclowd9901 »

nrjames wrote: post #29

While gaming oriented, there's a great group of people who discuss pretty much everything over at the Quarter to Three forums. https://forum.quartertothree.com/

Wow, I used to read Tom Chick's writings there a lifetime ago. Some of the best video gaming centric writing I've ever seen.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#54

Post by ultramancool »

creshal wrote: post #16
sergiotapia wrote: post #4

Almost all of the popular communities online lean left, take your pick. You have much slimmer pickings if you're a conservative. http://gab.ai recently launched as a pro free-speech twitter alternative, I would also check them out.

> Almost all of the popular communities online lean left, take your pick. Funny, I'd have considered them to lean right, since I'm left, and don't see myself represented in them either. I'm sure there's a name for this sort of cognitive bias.

There's a site that indexes reddit's most downvoted posts and quite often it's about 75% right-leaning political news being posted to major news and politics subreddits, if you visit those subreddits, the upvoted stuff is indeed stuff that's more left-leaning. Hard to see otherwise here, especially when you factor in the upvotes and not just # of comments.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#55

Post by NikolaeVarius »

From what I've seen, any place that claims to be "civil" also tends to be the most closed minded communities, especially ones that have upvote downvote systems.

Unless you happen to agree with the specific set of ideas that a majority of that community happens to agree with, your contribution is meaningless

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#56

Post by Bjartr »

creshal wrote: post #16
sergiotapia wrote: post #4

Almost all of the popular communities online lean left, take your pick. You have much slimmer pickings if you're a conservative. http://gab.ai recently launched as a pro free-speech twitter alternative, I would also check them out.

> Almost all of the popular communities online lean left, take your pick. Funny, I'd have considered them to lean right, since I'm left, and don't see myself represented in them either. I'm sure there's a name for this sort of cognitive bias.

You don't really notice the things you agree with (the sky is blue). What stands out are things that violate your worldview and are thus unexpected(the sky is polka-dotted).

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#57

Post by carpathiani »

rubidium wrote: post #21

Let 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…

meetup.com is great for finding this

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#58

Post by chetangoti »

manish_gill wrote: post #19

I'm trying to create a private slack community for this actually. It's just a bunch of friends/trusted people who we know are smart, bring a new perspective etc and have good things to contribute. It's been slow going creating a community like that (high achieving, smart people who are usually too busy to participate - So far we're just 20 people with like 10 the most active) but I have hopes that some day it'll beco…

It is possible for me to join that community?

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#59

Post by Jtsummers »

pjc50 wrote: post #49
Jtsummers wrote: post #35

Earlier 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…

At one point you could adjust your weightings for things, so you could make "funny" or "insightful" count for -1 for an entertainingly different view of the site.

Yeah, I vaguely recalled that but forgot my password so haven't confirmed it. Just got in, seems my last post was 4 years ago. Anyways, it seems that feature has been disabled (or it's well hidden). But that'd be a useful addition as well.

You can filter on comment length. Apparently right now I filter out all one-line comments that don't have +4 or better. So "+1", "this", etc. won't show up, but "Oh hey, that reminds me of " will.

EDIT: Seems I was wrong. https://slashdot.org/my/comments lets me see and change those settings, but getting here was non-obvious so I'm not certain if this will affect anything or if it's merely a legacy page. You'll need to be logged in to see anything. But this offers score modifier options for comments by how they're moderated (troll, offtopic, funny, etc.) and friends/foes.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

#60

Post by forgottenpass »

I find this area to be best filled by blogs. The format allows long ideas to be explored in a way no "social" site can. The comments sections are better at being on-topic, because there are less people stumbling in from another corner of a generalist platform. Or comments are disabled, and if you want to participate in a back-and-forth, you need to start your own blog and have something worthwhile to say. Barrier to entry helps with signal to noise ratio. The youtube comments are widely regarded as worthless, but bad video essays on youtube don't make people give up on watching video essays in general.

There is a lot of legwork in finding and following good blogs or aggregators. But if you're seeking out ideas (or "insightful commentary"), you can't avoid doing the legwork. Stopping in one place limits you to the scope of ideas found in that place.

HN and (some) subreddits are certainly good starting points, but the content eventually become predictable, trite and cliche. Even here. (especially here?) The collective conscious of any one community amasses new ideas slower than someone seeking them out can consume them. And that's the best case scenario, it doesn't even account for for topics that have devolved into an echo chamber, or constant flamewars on certain topics. You have to constantly keep moving.

Note: When I say blogs, I mean blogs. Not some hackneyed news-blog that will feed your mind poison just to keep you coming back. The Gawker properties were a FOX News for a younger, lefter crowd and it drove me up the wall when people didn't recognize that.

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