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Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

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Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#141

Post by koolba »

dang wrote: post #121
anonbanker wrote: post #73

I need to preface this by saying I voted for Jill Stein. You're right that HN should be a place for intellectual curiosity and substantive comments. But here's what I've seen in the past year: * Flagrantly allow anti-prop-8 posts and submissions to assist in the smearing of Brendan Eich. * Flagrantly allow pro-clinton posts and link submissions to thrive on HN. * Never step-in to stop downvoting brigades on pro-conse…

> it looks like sour grapes This is one of those unintended consequences that gobsmack me any time we try out some new idea here. I'm sure anyone who deals with large internet communities has the same experience. The funny thing is that it's always obvious that it was bound to come up, in retrospect—just never beforehand. It's like the unveiling of the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel: hidden in plain view every…

I'd have a lot more confidence in the unbiased nature of a request like this if it was suggested prior to the outcome of the election. It's not like things were less contentious then.

Say if this were announced the day before the election, regardless of the outcome, with a hold period of say a month.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#143

Post by davidw »

trjordan wrote: post #74
rustyfe wrote: post #32

One question that interests/concerns me is making judgement calls about what is/is not a political story. Some links will be cut and dry, some will not. Some comments will be immediately identified as political, some will just be politics adjacent. For instance, on a story about self driving cars, will it be appropriate to talk about UBI? On a story about cryptography, will it be acceptable to talk about how it appli…

Agreed, this is hard. My personal benchmark is: does this article have information that would change a political viewpoint? If so, then political talk feels like fair game. Story where the NSA creates a practical quantum computer? Let's talk about what this means. Story where a researcher makes incremental progress towards a quantum computer? Let's not talk about how long it will be until the NSA can break all crypto…

> does this article have information that would change a political viewpoint?

Now that is a "unicorn" in the sense of a mythical beast! You can dig into usenet archives from the 80ies, and find people debating a lot of the same stuff they do today. People mostly do not change their minds about things.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#144

Post by ocdtrekkie »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #106
rustyfe wrote: post #32

One question that interests/concerns me is making judgement calls about what is/is not a political story. Some links will be cut and dry, some will not. Some comments will be immediately identified as political, some will just be politics adjacent. For instance, on a story about self driving cars, will it be appropriate to talk about UBI? On a story about cryptography, will it be acceptable to talk about how it appli…

> On a story about cryptography Or Net Neutrality. Or research/tech about Climate Change. It seems like this could easily be abused by partisans who want to deflect the issues. Requests to have mods delete climate change articles about a hot startup doing solar power seems to empower climate deniers. Requests to have mods delete Trump's anti-net neutrality appointments seems to empower Trump supporters.

I don't think this is too hard. Cool tech about cheap, efficient solar power: Tech. The "how to talk to climate change deniers" submission I flagged a few minutes ago: Not tech.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#146

Post by dang »

nerfhammer wrote: post #100
dang wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, it's not possible to define "politics" precisely, and it would be a mistake to try. But there's nothing new in that; the HN guidelines have always mentioned politics without defining the term, and we get by. We can clarify, though. The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet.…

So, do you mean only national politics?

I don't see why we would.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#147

Post by pmiller2 »

What counts as political? My only real concern is that this is pretty vaguely specified. E.g can we discuss net neutrality? The economy? Economics in general? Professional licensing requirements? Arbitration agreements? All of these have produced interesting discussions in the past, and, while I could stand to go a week without, I'd hate to ding someone's account for posting them.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#148

Post by TrevorJ »

dang wrote: post #8
ProAm wrote: post #5

I'm a little skeptical of this.... What's the ulterior motive here? We all know SamA was very anti-trump, is this an alternative method to keep the new US political regime from affecting YC? It's almost a weird form of discussion censorship. Whose idea was this?

It was my idea and has nothing to do with political preferences, though the election season was probably a factor. It has to do with us noticing an uptick in two undesirable things: harsh ideological comments, and accounts that use HN primarily for political battle. You can see one example of how the idea developed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052458

With respect, technology is at the nexus of politics now, like it or not. What possible case can be made that questions of technology are not, as of now, central to the debate on many political fronts? Should we not be leading the charge for robust and informed discussions of the role of technology in the political sphere? If not us then who?

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#149

Post by eevilspock »

So HN is yet another filter bubble?

> We become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones.

HN is designed to be a tribe. The HN tribe and the Silicon Valley ethos it espouses are by their nature very political, having profound effects on the direction of our economy, our society, and our world. By censoring challenges to this ethos, you are reinforcing the tribal boundaries, and members of the tribe continue on without the constant challenge and testing that is the very nature of truth finding and even science.

This Tell HN is itself a political act.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#150

Post by nkurz »

sctb wrote: post #68
bradleyjg wrote: post #12

I've been hesitant to go into new and just start flagging all the terrible stories because I've read about people that lost the ability to flag. So I only flag on relatively rare occasion. Does such an overuse mechanism actually exist?

Not overuse, just abuse. If you'd like to flag some more but are worried about that, just send us an email at hn@ycombinator.com and we'd be thrilled to take a look and give some feedback.

I don't know how automated the system is, but would it be feasible to say something like "If your email address is in your profile, we'll try to give you a warning by email before we take action?" As it is, there's not much feedback on whether the flagging action is appropriate or not.
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