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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?

#231

Post by gkya »

IANAD wrote: post #227
gkya wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 philosophic…

> But if we take it as convivance and proper productive discussion of different, potentially opposite ideas, HN is not all that good. I agree. But how could it be made better?

By fixing the problems that I cite in the sentence after the one you quote. I doubt that it is possible though.

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

#232

Post by IANAD »

gkya wrote: post #231
IANAD wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if we take it as convivance and proper productive discussion of different, potentially opposite ideas, HN is not all that good. I agree. But how could it be made better?

By fixing the problems that I cite in the sentence after the one you quote. I doubt that it is possible though.

But those are the problems and I'm looking for solutions. What could change on the HN site or in the rules for its community to fix these problems?

I'm not sure anything can be done, which is why I ask.

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

#233

Post by type0 »

forgottenpass wrote: post #60

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…

> Note: When I say blogs, I mean blogs.

I agree. The only problem is that it's in a way difficult to have a discussion with blogs. Let's say I read a great post somewhere, the person might or might not have comments on their page (embedded facebook comments are worst are ppl still not aware that not everyone uses it?). If they do have comments I probably wouldn't be able to reply (unless I'm a regular visitor of their site). If I write a longer reply and put it on my blog then there is this whole thing that if I put my link in their comments it's not as seamless. My best hope is some sort of IndieWeb solution for this but so far I haven't found anything that works any good.

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

#235

Post by tonyedgecombe »

DeathArrow wrote: post #47
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…

You mean he should get out of his house? Isn't it dangerous?

Very funny.

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

#236

Post by dang »

eevilspock wrote: post #89
TeMPOraL wrote: 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…

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'm late to this thread but this is definitely not factual:

> The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral.

There's a cognitive bias where everybody thinks the slant they disagree with is the one that dominates this site. If you held opposite views, you'd be arguing that HN is dominated by liberals or what have you. Perhaps that's not obvious to you, but it is to us whose job it is to oversee HN as a whole. HN's archives are full of people complaining about this from all sides.

The point of view you describe (or, to be fair, caricature) does exist on HN, of course. But the community is politically divided, most claims people make about who dominates it are just a rhetorical device, i.e. to score cheap points in arguments.

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

#237

Post by kordless »

IANAD wrote: post #232
gkya wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By fixing the problems that I cite in the sentence after the one you quote. I doubt that it is possible though.

But those are the problems and I'm looking for solutions. What could change on the HN site or in the rules for its community to fix these problems? I'm not sure anything can be done, which is why I ask.

We would need tools to vote negative content to be categorized as dissonant, circular reasoning, or speaking for other's feelings/blaming.

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

#238

Post by eevilspock »

dang wrote: post #236
eevilspock wrote: post #89

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…

I'm late to this thread but this is definitely not factual: > The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral. There's a cognitive bias where everybody thinks the slant they disagree with is the one that dominates this site. If you held opposite views, you'd be arguing that HN is dominated by liberals or what ha…

Of course it is not factual. It is an opinion, as is your comment.

You are implying that you have no cognitive bias yourself, that it is not possible that your bias prevents you from seeing truth in my point of view.

That there are "people complaining about this from all sides" does not make it symmetrical, does not prove that all those sides are equal in standing.

That "this community is deeply politically divided" does not mean that divide goes right down the middle. America is deeply politically divided, yet it is overall to the right of much of Europe, such that our left is considered a European center or center-right. In other words, America has an overall slant, and Europe has a different one.

Are you not dismissively caricaturing me? It's one thing to agree to disagree, but your dismissiveness is rather astounding, especially given you are the site moderator. Perhaps you are engaging in tit-for-tat dismissiveness, in defense of the site you are responsible for. But still, that doesn't bode well coming from the site's moderator.

Do you believe that Y-combinator and HN moderators are representative of society as a whole? Or that somehow they are a non-representative set that is somehow free of slant? Perhaps you believe that if HN users, or its moderators, were predominantly women, or African Americans, or Latino Americans, that HN moderation, content and comments would be much the same? You must believe this if you believe HN has no slant. I certainly don't.

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