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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?

#161
post #20

Definitely https://8ch.net/pol/ . I have seen a lot of insightful discussion about politics there.

Insightful maybe, but the ironic (and I'm not sure to what degree) antisemitism, nazi veneration, and apparent lust for the end of the world gets old quick.

I'd kill for a /pol/ that bans low effort posting like that.

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

#162

http://metafilter.com

Have an upvote. The "Note: It is allowed to cost money." reminds me that the $5 charge on MeFi filters out alot of noise. However, this doesn't necessarily promote an increase in quality. Much of the discussion can be, like Reddit, cute or snarky one-liner comments.

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

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Civility does not imply that we have to discuss topics that are of interest to you. If you want to discuss those things, you'll have to find some people who want to discuss them -- clearly, the majority here does not, and they have every right to downvote stuff they don't think belongs on the front page.

Not sure if the parent was trying to communicate this or not, but I think the core of the problem is really that alternative view points (ie. comments to discussion threads) get purposely buried, not necessarily the encompassing discussion thread. So sometimes it feels like we are missing out on varied and interesting comments because they aren't inline with the most prevalent viewpoint of the HN community.

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

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that vacuous comment are ruthless downvoted as they should be.

But observations, even with high grade citations that criticize the libertarian narrative are also regularly down voted to oblivion.

Likewise any criticism of Russia gets clobber very quickly no matter how much evidence is offered.

[edit] likewise pointing out either of those two problems

So yes, poor post are down voted very efficiently but there is still a genuine problem with downvoting to hide information that parties don't want spread.

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

#165

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

Is it? A lot of the people are pretty solid on meetup.com, but my autism radar has gotten _so_ much better since going to meetup events. Unfortunately, it only takes a couple of bad conversationalists to make a good conversation difficult.

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

#166
post #8

I 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…

HN is where I follow the tech news. For discussions, if we take civility as politeness and elaboration of one's points, HN is quite good. But if we take it as convivance and proper productive discussion of different, potentially opposite ideas, HN is not all that good. Here there are some certain and strong biases and dogmas, and the moderation is oligarchic. I've learnt to not post on political stuff and philosophical questions about tech, as all you get is downvotes, flags, thread-detaching and whatnot. I believe any politics post is off-topic here, and for philosophical questions on tech, if the tech is liked, sceptics are lapidated.

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

#168

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

"Civil" seems to equate with "filtered via down votes". I would prefer seeing just the number of up votes and the number of down votes which gives it a "popularity ranking" of a sort. I can then make a determination for myself if I want to read it or not. Lots of up votes, few down votes? Probably speaks to the majority opinion. Lots of down votes and few up votes? Could either be a shit post or one that goes against the grain. Two seconds of reading will tell me which. Lots of down and up votes? Probably a comment I should read, even if I'm just skimming.

I don't need the community to filter for me, I'd rather just get more information in order to choose what to read. But then I usually read any forum in as raw a format as they allow.

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

#169
I use twitter and have a quick and snappy discussion in about a dozen exchanges, many times with known people like journalists, columnists etc. Of course, you must carefully choose who you interact with or follow. I find engaging in discussion of such topics as politics and religion to be futile, and economics is intertwined with politics. I only do it when I see something intolerably incorrect or foolish and I just have to engage with the fellow (as in this https://xkcd.com/386/).

On a cynical note (or realistic if you will), I don't think topics like politics and religion can be discussed in a civil manner. If they are, then those discussing are not getting to the meat of the matter because once you get there, you are bound to hit a nerve or two and the civility facade comes right off. Even IRL those who engage in civil debates are more careful about appearing civil than actually debating effectively. The interwebs, with its anonymity and all that, allows one to be much more freer in bringing out their ugly side right of the bat (though sometimes it could be a persona adopted for the kicks).

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By "bury" I mean more than "grey/flagged/dead". I also mean in terms of order on the page. When looking at rank order, groupthink is a large if not prevailing determinant, especially since HN applies a penalty for contentiousness (defined as lots of upvotes AND downvotes) to both articles, comments and users.
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