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

#521

Post by reflexive » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

ritchiea wrote: post #445

chrissnell wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully support this detox week. As someone whose political views don't align with the average HN reader, I often feel marginalized by unfair downvoting in political discussion, even though I have made my points in an informed and respectful way. It often feels like there is one prevailing slant on this site and those of the majority are free to push their views while the rest of us must either read it and ignore it…

Hacker News is an unfair place for people to speak up about about the lack of racial and gender diversity in tech. I have been downvoted for comments where I felt like I was making uncontroversial critiques of the status quo. I have seen HN users say that black neighborhoods need more policing than other neighborhoods. It's not an easy place to be non-white or non-male. I believe banning politics is a bad idea even f…

uncontroversial critiques of the status quo

Hmm...

Let me try to understand your reasoning. If everyone agreed with your critique of the "status quo", why would it be the status quo to begin with?

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

#522

Post by csdreamer7 » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

I disagree. As other have said, there is a great deal of anxiety over Trump's victory and what it means for our industry.

Arbitrarily banning relevant political topics could take away alot of the value I get from Hacker News. I expect news on Trump banning net neutrality to be on Hacker News. I expect news on fully automated McDonalds to be on Hacker News or Amazon suffering a bot revolt.

I can understand a need to flag unrelated political comments on non-political topics.

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

#523

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #135

minimaxir wrote: post #2

It's worth noting that in order to flag a comment, you must click the permalink first. I've seen political stories flagged pretty quickly during normal HN usage, but rarely comment threads.

I think this is a great point. I assume putting the "flag" button one click away is to prevent people using it as a down vote when arguing, but it definitely means that I never flag comments, only stories. And comments are the place where "politicalness" really has the damaging effects. I wonder if there might be either an opt-in to keep it zero clicks away, or maybe over a certain amount of karma it is visible, or s…

It's a speed bump to prevent impulsive flagging. We could try putting it next to comments everywhere, but the comment byline ("ianstormtaylor 2 hours ago [-]") is now so minimal that that would be a massive change.

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

#524

Post by _qc3o » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #380

This is a terrible decision. The tech industry has built powerful tools of social control, and runs vast databases of private data on pretty much everyone in the country. We have a golden period of forty-some days before a new administration comes to power that has shown every intent of using that information to deport people and create a national Muslim registry. We need to be talking about the political implication…

Talk is cheap and political discussion is especially cheap. How do you propose to lead constructive discussions around these matters that will lead to actionable items for cleaning up the mess?

From what I have seen I don't think HN in its current form is the right forum for those discussions. Even scanning this sub-thread prompted by your comment I'm already starting to see that the discussion seems to be devolving. Here is a group of technologists that could in theory spin up another forum with moderation tools and integration with HN to have back and forth between the two forums based on what "flavor" (political or technical) the discussion was going in and all I see is second-guessing and critiquing with no actionable and constructive items in the mix.

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

#525

Post by tomkat0789 » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 10:07 PM UTC

Even if they don't totally ban politics on HN forever, what if we keep a week/a few days a month where no politics are allowed - just as an occasional reminder that this is isn't supposed to be a political website. Maybe we can make Fridays politics free or something to remind people to chill.

I support the experiment! This is the sort of creativity and character that brings me to this site! I'm OK with topics with too much political overtone being a little stigmatized.

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

#526

Post by danso » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 10:07 PM UTC

I respect that HN wants to stay away from the burning dumpsters that have been online political discussions lately. I probably post more than my fair share of political discussion here, but i try to do so only when I see it being relevant to the general aims of HN, even if you're here only for the tech and entrepreneurship. A lot of tech and business is influenced by political machinations, and I value the HN quality commentary on it.

But yeah, partisanship, not so much. Maybe a week of non-politics will help level the conversations here, though it's still a relative oasis compared to just about anywhere else online.

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

#527

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 10:07 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #508

jc_811 wrote: post #470

A submission on climate change was flagged and removed due to these political guidelines. Is this really considered political? Wouldn't it be more justified to call it 'scientific'? How is anyone supposed to realistically draw the line between what is political and what is not? Couldn't any topic in the world be related back to politics one way or another? This seems like a blatant plot to censor 'unwanted' topics an…

If it's the one I recall, it was about "how to talk to climate change deniers" or something like that. I flagged it (dang says to overflag rather than underflag in this regard anyhow). I'd have a hard time categorizing it as "not political". It's a charged political topic, the details of that conversation had nothing to do with technology, and almost entirely were about "how to argue with the people you disagree with…

> (dang says to overflag rather than underflag in this regard anyhow)

But only for this week. After that, maybe the other way around.

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

#528

Post by exstudent2 » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 10:07 PM UTC

mjg59 wrote: post #288

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.…

Hi dang, Quick question for clarification - would http://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-companies-delay-diversity-r... fall into the kind of race and gender issues that you'd block this week?

That you're actively trying to stir up drama about this on Twitter demonstrates why HN may be best off leaving these discussions to other forums (and I say this as someone fairly active in the discussions in question).

It will be nice to see HN minus the outrage and Twitter/social media drama/witch-hunting.

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

#529

Post by chillingeffect » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 10:09 PM UTC

If this is an experiment, what is the hypothesis? And how will we know if it was successful or not?

"Our hope is that we can learn together by watching what happens when we try something new." is very vague.

This sounds more like an exercise of power.

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

#530

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 10:10 PM UTC

giardini wrote: post #397

Not a gripe but an idea: rather than ban persons from HN for bad behavior, would it possibly be better to "emprison" them, that is, disallow them from posting for awhile and then, after a few days or weeks, permit them to resume posting? Reason I ask this is that I recently encountered an HN situation where someone who appeared to be a productive member of the HN community was banned from posting because of (truly) p…

We effectively have that already, because if users continue to post good comments after being banned, other users will vouch for those and we review vouched comments. When someone who was banned reforms their ways and starts abiding by the site rules, we unban them.

Of course that can be a slow process, but anyone who doesn't want to be banned is invited to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that they'll abide by the rules in the future. And if you see a case of someone being banned that you think is incorrect, you should email us about that too, because we don't see everything.