Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 241 posts

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

#61

Post by cheriot »

eloy wrote: post #13

I'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…

reddit.com/r/askhistorians is a goldmine. I love sitting in the cheap seats for some of the discussions there.

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

#62

Post by creshal »

gunn wrote: post #41
creshal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Only showing upvoted authors would only reinforce your personal echo chamber, see also: Tumblr. Only showing downvoted authors would, going by my Reddit voting statistic, expose me to 95% dick jokes and 5% authors that have valid points I dis…

> Only showing upvoted authors would only reinforce your personal echo chamber, see also: Tumblr. Certainly, if you just upvote left-wing and downvote right-wing or vice versa. But if you want to see something better you can get it by upvoting those authors that have valid points you disagree with too. I think currently some amount of upvoting happens because people want to amplify views they agree with even if they…

I'm still unconvinced, most people still self-filter, consciously or not. You already have this filter mechanism right now, in a coarser form, by picking the subreddits, twitter accounts, … you follow – and those you respond to.

How'd you get the initial exposure to high-quality content you disagree with? HN is the only site where I run across right-wing content that (occasionally) isn't utter garbage, and even here you have the whole community pre-filtered for people who accept HN's comparatively heavy-handed moderation/censorship approach.

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

#63

Post by sergiotapia »

hood_syntax wrote: post #12
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.

> 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

> but that's just a money related trend imo

It's _much_ more insidious, but I'll leave it at that.

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

#65

Post by creshal »

ultramancool wrote: post #54
creshal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> There's a site that indexes reddit's most downvoted posts

Link?

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

#67

Post by pyre »

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.

Like Reddit where /r/TheDonald is consistently at the top of /r/all, and stories about terrorism on /r/WorldNews devolve into xenophobic rants that stop just short of containing phrases like "the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim?" That's not too "left leaning" to me.

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

#68

Post by losteverything »

If you are asking a place online that equates to in-person discussions, I would say there isn't any.

As I told my kid when I showed him mosaic, the screen is not a human. Humans have kindness and compassion. The screen is to get things. To some it is a way to make a living. The screen can never be generous; that is learned at the home.

Ann Landers and Dear Abby. Ever hear of them? Newspaper columnists who answered readers questions. I always asked, " Why would anybody seek help or advice from a newspaper person? " Plus, you have never met them.

Why would I seek advice or opinion from a person I never met?

Google any ailment and the results are astounding. Ask your mom or dad if it is something to worry about and you are likely to get a trusted answer

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

#69

Post by mozumder »

eloy wrote: post #13

I'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…

The problem with places like Reddit is that they rely on users to moderate.

The obvious problem with that is now stories are filtered based on populist mass appeal, instead of insightful or expert appeal.

Populist content is very different from expert content. Clickbait headline is populist content. A peer-reviewed journal headline is expert content.

Which one do you think is going to be upvoted in a place like Reddit?

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

#70

Post by brador »

baq wrote: post #26

every strongly moderated place will do. HN and some subreddits like r/science, r/askscience, etc. are of very good quality. can't stress enough that moderation is the key.

Every strongly moderated place turns to the bias of the moderators. Any discussion outside their allowance gets censored.
Post reply on HN