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

Your comment was rightly flagged because it broke the rules, and in the thread about the rules to boot.

If you want to discuss whether this experiment is a good idea for HN, that's fine, but you need to do it without fighting a specific political fight at the same time. "The new National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, endorsed the totally false rumors that led to this shooting" is the very thing we're asking you not to post this week.

Can we train up a sentiment analyzer on the delta between the stories and comments this week vs. all others, and then apply it to discovering "political discussion?"

2) It's not relevant whether the shooter read HN, but there could be very fruitful discussions as to how this was instigated because of social media of which is mainly built by tech in the bay area.

3) 24 hour news may be an issue of degradation but fake news perpetuated within giant tech companies is also an issue. You cannot talk about fake news without going into the politics of it.

I've never modded a community as large as HN, but I know exactly what you mean. A good mod is accused of bias from all sides of a debate. And a lack of foresight, followed by eventual action, will likely engender accusations of moderation bias. Frankly, your answer, even "in progress" is still satisfactory.

I was going to send this in an email to you ages ago, but this is as good a place as any, I guess.

I'm sure you've seen this account many times, but I intentionally post unpopular opinions here, often to actively game upvotes/downvotes. Sometimes, I post the exact opposite opinion that I hold in meatspace. Occassionally I accidentially stumble on something new (who knew wal-mart was so popular on HN?[0]), and proceed to extend a conversation to see how much karma I will actively lose. I liken it to game testing, where one is encouraged to play incorrectly in order to identify bugs in a program.

I have a pretty good understanding of the political pulse of HN as a result. The HN of 2016 overwhelmingly skews California Liberal, and often includes much of the identity politics. If you even hint at opposing gay rights (which, as an LGBTQ* is obviously not my position), you will be downvote-bombed. In this thread I have been downvoted for making a pro-Eich post. Sometimes, the retaliation for an opinion extends to downvoting my post history.

The system is incredibly easy to game for karma; just post something that largely supports the majority opinion, and contributes just enough that it isn't flagged for not providing anything to the conversation. Keep this up until you have enough karma to downvote, then work on another account. If you're judicious in keeping to the hivemind's platform, you can get a 650 karma account in less than a month (I've done it twice, though I deleted the accounts afterward). in six months, you can downvote a post you don't like to light grey in a matter of seconds.

I'm sure you've made efforts to penalize stories. Largely, you've been really good on that. However, comments are where the hivemind lives, and it can be measured in upvotes and downvotes. If a post isn't incendiary, but ends up with more downvotes than upvotes, it's safe to say this is an account of maybe not the entire site, but at least who is regularly active at the time of posting.

I completely agree with you about the toxicity of political fights, even though I hypocritically partake in them for research. I also agree that everyone believes their side is the underdog. I just don't agree that HN is "equally-biased", and I have the post history to prove it.

(yes, kissing the ass of the mods is part of the game, as it effectively stops the flow of downvotes once you intervene; However, I do mean it when I compliment how you've run the site. You've made HN worth using throughout this Eternal Septembering of redditors)

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13106730

I feel some irony was lost with the posting of this topic. The relationship the actions HN moderation takes against HN users is, by definition, political. So, by definition, this post should be removed.

Yes the moderation team is going to be handling this on a case by case basis and a thread like this isn't actually going to be shut down but I think it illustrates my point: politics is woven through society at virtually every level. There are very few stories that lack at least some form of politics.

So why not let the community decide what they feel it a topic worth discussion and what is not by flagging posts (like what they do today)? Why must there be interference to steer the community in a specific, editorialized direction?