I disagree but those are the rules.
> Ok, have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we'll try to allay them. Want to share your specific concerns?
Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
201–210 of 1001 posts
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually haven't seen very many political stories on here. I've personally avoided most of the political crap too, so maybe I just didn't click on a lot of it (and therefore selectively un-memoryed it). I don't feel this need to be an explicit policy. I mean it gets into the entire "what is politics debate." Hackernews is about hacking (software, hardware, life), and I still see tons of that on here -- well that an…
Yeah, I'm with you. Are there political threads here that I have been missing?
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#203Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#204Can we have an Amazon/AWS "news" detox week, too? :D
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#205I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a scientific community, but it is not the case, and even then p…
I'd rather see HN go politics-free forever. Political discussions do not enjoy the same level of objectivity that technical and business discussions do. Frankly, it may be impossible to expect objectivity within political discussion because our political feelings are so deeply-held and tied to our individual upbringings, culture, and locale.
Unless HN can figure out how to give fair treatment to minority opinions, it's best to exclude these discussions entirely.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#206Can we have an Amazon/AWS "news" detox week, too? :D
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#207> Why? Political conflicts cause harm here Unfortunately this a consequence of people trying to shove politics everywhere, including in unrelated communities. I don't want to point fingers but a specific camp has mastered the art of forcing their political beliefs upon others in the name of "the right side of history". The result is now, you can't be just a developer, or a techie. You have to be a techie + or a devel…
A strict reading of the guidelines would suggest that they already are. There's nothing interesting or gratifying in those discussions. They devolve into poo-flinging with a probability approaching 1.
In my experience, obvious political flamebait gets flagged off the frontpage out what feels like sheer exasperation. Comments not so much, but they generally end up a few shades lighter.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#208I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a scientific community, but it is not the case, and even then p…
I find it disturbing too. Right now one of the top stories on HN is about Amazon Go and the top comment is about whether the destruction of jobs it could cause is socially acceptable. I don't know whether that is politics or not but I can't imagine discussing Amazon Go as a technology without having that discussion. In fact when you look at HN very little is about particular technologies. Most of our discussion is ar…
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#209Earlier 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.…
>The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet. Am I to read that as "No Stories or Comments about Trump"? Maybe that wasn't the intention, but the specific hot buttons seem curiously chosen.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#210I no longer frequent the politics sites (left and right) that I used to visit being a politics addict. I now no longer want to listen to any politics for the next 4 or 8 years (whichever the term may end up being).
I have stuck my fingers in my ears and am spouting "la la la la...." loudly whenever I go near a political discussion.
No more politics for me (at least till I am ready to come out of my self imposed exile).