Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by yolesaber » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 8:27 PM UTC

KineticLensman wrote: post #122

tarikjn wrote: post #62

I 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 this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. I see this great move as a way of the community lifting its head out of a sandy quagmire to glance at the shining beacon, the vision on the hill, the where we want to be, unsullied by political nausea. Sure, in a week we can get back into the grim reality, the tech-noir crapsack future, but perhaps…

This is some incredibly naive thinking. To build a 'positive future' you need to focus on the problems its facing - otherwise what are you building?

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

#222

Post by md224 » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 8:27 PM UTC

tarikjn wrote: post #62

I 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 this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand.

This community already has its head in the sand. Political topics are flagged to oblivion, and even those that aren't inevitably inspire so much discussion that the flamewar detector goes off and nukes the thread.

Imagine: in an era where we rail against filter bubbles, a website punishes threads that are too active!

The Devil's Advocate says "Hey now, there's certainly a time and place for political discussion, but HN is a tech forum, not a political forum." Good point, but HN is also a Third Place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place), and being a Third Place means promoting Civic Engagement. I agree that HN should strive to stay on topic, but there is plenty of overlap between tech and politics and I think that space deserves to be explored by the community.

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

#223

Post by Cafey » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 8:27 PM UTC

mememachine wrote: post #138

KineticLensman wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. I see this great move as a way of the community lifting its head out of a sandy quagmire to glance at the shining beacon, the vision on the hill, the where we want to be, unsullied by political nausea. Sure, in a week we can get back into the grim reality, the tech-noir crapsack future, but perhaps…

Not all of us view political topics as nausea inducing. I don't think politics have overtaken the site or even become a significant part of it, so I wonder why politics-averse individuals cant just avoid political threads?

> so I wonder why politics-averse individuals cant just avoid political threads

It is indeed possible to avoid clicking on a specific kind of topic. From what I understand, the issue here is more that it just isn't a fit for the purpose of this community/website.

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

#224

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 8:27 PM UTC

tarikjn wrote: post #62

I 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…

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by politician » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 8:27 PM UTC

Hi dang. About 45m ago, I added a comment [1] in the Amazon GO mega-thread that mentions the concept of religion. Is this comment acceptable per new policy?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108455

(Aside: I believe that this detox experiment is treading on dangerous ground, that it will be a struggle to contain the amount of censorship that will happen as a result of encouraging people to flag each other in this way, and that the effects will linger beyond the 1 week time limit.)

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

#226

Post by mmanfrin » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 8:28 PM UTC

What is the line? Does Net Neutrality count as 'politics'? It is a very political topic, but also one that is important to this community. How are you drawing the line?

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

#227

Post by anonbanker » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 8:28 PM UTC

gjkood wrote: post #210

To tell you the truth, I put myself into a politics news vacuum the day after the elections and the results were announced. I 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 whene…

Upvoted for the word "addict".

Do you feel that political posters, regardless of viewpoint, are merely chasing the endorphin high that comes from the argument?

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

#228

Post by bargl » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 8:29 PM UTC

I'm seeing a lot of people say this is a bad idea. I completely disagree. TL;DR; If HN is your only news source, you have bigger issues than this experiment, go subscribe to another source of political news.

Hacker news is a news aggregation medium for "Hacker News." The purpose of this site is to get your fix of tech news that you can't get other places. It isn't burying your head in the sand to ONLY have "Hacker" news on your Hacker News site. It's sticking your head in the sand not to read any other news sources. That is on the individual. It is not the job of Hacker News to educate you on politics. The responsibility of getting good news is on the user not the medium. HN doesn't claim to be a one stop shop for all of your news.

More importantly, this is an experiment, on a site that is very interested in Science and Programming. It completely makes sense to have an experiment like this to see if it affects the quality of the comments. Being against this experiment is like my dad trying to tell me that God Created the earth 5000 years ago from parts of other planets (complete hyperbole). WTH? It doesn't matter it's one week and then it's over.

I'm assuming a good experiment will THEN make assertions and consult with the community to see if this worked, was bad/good/etc. At that point voice your concerns, but not yet, there is no evidence it's all conjecture.

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

#229

Post by knucklesandwich » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 8:29 PM UTC

tarikjn wrote: post #62

I 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…

It's not like political affiliation is the only example of ingroup-vs-outgroup conflict on HN. I think it's an incredibly weak argument to even pretend like this is somehow a distinguishing characteristic of political discussion that makes it somehow more inflammatory.

If you want to enforce the code of conduct more strongly, fine. But highlighting political discussion as somehow worse than other kinds of discussion involving competing views is incredibly frustrating and only serves those who may benefit from engineers putting their political and ethical agency to bed in a work/work discussion context. Politics is about choice, its about reasoning out decisions and coming to a consensus on those decisions. Work life is not exempt from the scope of those decisions, and trying to keep that discussion out is a pretty questionable practice.

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

#230

Post by baq » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 8:29 PM UTC

pfarnsworth wrote: post #137

dang, doing things like this is turning HN more into reddit with heavy-handing modding, than just letting the community dictate for itself what it wants to see. The community has existed and guided itself a lot longer than the time you've been around, I think you should trust us.

HN has always been more heavily moderated than reddit, perhaps you just didn't notice.