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

#361

Post by vcarl » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

md224 wrote: post #222

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 t…

I'm happy to see particularly interesting pieces that deal with politics here, but I've seen far too much "breaking" political news here for my tastes. I'd much prefer if HN's politics were more deep and analytical, rather than following the same reality show that I can watch on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter.

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

#362

Post by wbillingsley » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #263

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 think this is a fantastic idea -- it seems the trend today is to inject politics into absolutely everything. In the past, the prevailing wisdom was to avoid political and religious topics in the workplace and technical spheres (conferences, message boards like HN, etc.). Focus on the tech and just the tech and you'll be surprised how much nastiness is naturally eliminated from this board.

And as one, the community set down the Republican / Democrat placards they had so crudely been swinging against each other ... and picked up once more the placards for vi and emacs.

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

#363

Post by vacri » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

brilliantcode wrote: post #273

This is a slippery slope, I read it as "lets censor ourselves for this week and everybody should do their part". Tech is like any other industry, it's rife with politics. I don't agree with trolling but obviously this place isn't reddit, lot of political debates are valuable and offer insights for those less politically inclined. If we agree to this policy what guarantee is there in the future that other topics that…

> This is censorship pure and simple.

No, it's 'moderation'. Censorship is where you can't say something in any (public) outlet.

> Is HN an America based community that reflects the core beliefs in freedom of speech & expression?

No, because downvoting 'ghosts' a comment, there's shadowbanning, dead comments, and the mods can already kill stories. Moderation is already alive and kicking on HN; there's plenty of it done by both mods and users.

Also, it's only for one week. It's bizarre to see just how many commentors are treating it like the end-times of civilisation.

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

#364

Post by ben0x539 » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

bargl wrote: post #228

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" n…

I'm not worried about this move because I think that I'll somehow miss out on political news, I'm worried because an attempt to detach ourselves from politics (as interpreted here) can only be to the detriment of those on the losing end of politics.

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

#365

Post by jressey » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

I disagree with this idea, the point where I consider it cowardly. This is a forum for a community, so let us talk about what we want to, and upvote it if it's good content. If this is actually a concern about a problem happening like on Reddit with upvote bots, then let's talk about that.

C'mon, hearing people talk positively about working with JS lights a fire inside me and my veins pop, so I just don't upvote their comments. Pretty simple.

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

#366

Post by netcraft » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

bargl wrote: post #300

s_q_b wrote: post #255

I live in Northwest Washington, D.C. I am a technologist, a government contractor, and an HN member for many years under various accounts since 2008. I respectfully disagree. Yesterday someone motivated by the "Pizzagate" story, spread and enabled by the social media systems we designed , fired multiple shots from a semi-automatic weapon into a crowded restaurant near my home. My partner and I passed the crime scene…

I empathize with your view, but I very much disagree with you. 1) It's an experiment, there should never be any disagreement with an experiment unless the experiment itself can cause harm to someone/something. The results of this experiment should be evaluated closely, and if they make new guidelines for HN I'm fully onboard. But it's an experiment. 2) The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I…

An experiment has clearly defined goals and a control. What are we testing here? Whether we are better educated when the week is over? Whether we feel better about what we read and how we participated here? What are the metrics?

HN might not should be or should strive to be the place where you get your news about politics - but it has certainly educated me about political positions and history in the past.

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

#367

Post by grey-area » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:09 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…

I'm inclined to do this too, but imagine how you'd feel if you posted this in the late 1920s. Politics has a nasty habit of intruding on our lives in ways we can't ignore.

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

#368

Post by ythn » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

md224 wrote: post #222

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 t…

I already get TONS of political crap thrown at me on facebook and reddit, why would I want my last bastion of pure, unadulterated technology news also tainted by the very thing I'm trying to avoid? I want to come here to discuss code and technology, not to argue about Trump or Clinton.

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

#369

Post by smsm42 » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:09 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 think banning politics completely would be a mistake, but maybe I'm wrong. One of the bases for rational thinker is to admit one can be wrong, and to be open to change one's opinion according to available facts. So, from this POV running an experiment and seeing whether no politics makes it better or worse I think completely appropriate. Maybe it'll prove a big mistake - so we'd suffer for a whole week (oh horrors!) or maybe it won't be, and we'll learn something new.

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

#370

Post by mcphage » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #278

mattnewton wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rub is, a lot of difficult conversations lead to what are effectively political answers. Take the amazon go which is on the front page right now. We need to be able to have a conversation about job displacing technologies, and hacker news has been a good venue for smart, civilized discussion on the topic. I'm all for flagging uncivilized discussions, but eliminating discussions outright because they might make pe…

Is political discourse in HN comment threads ever actually "effective", though? What actually results from having those discussions here that couldn't be accomplished just as easily in a forum where it's explicitly on-topic, e.g. /r/politics or similar? It's not as though policymakers or voters are looking to the HN comments section for guidance.

> What actually results from having those discussions here that couldn't be accomplished just as easily in a forum where it's explicitly on-topic, e.g. /r/politics or similar?

So many of the technologies that we use have political consequences or undertones—the reason that we have these discussions here is that otherwise it's not possible to have a substantial discussion about the technology at all. We'd be reduced to meaningless small talk.