Politics in Hacker News? http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This isn't politics, it's world events. It's also of interest to the HN community. Seriously, stop making these comments.
Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt
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Re: Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
A foreign journalist working for a news organisation with a pretty good reputation. Generally that's news wherever it happens in the world. I haven't been following what has happened in Egypt. I now know it has become a place where foreign journalists working for Al-Jazeera are sentenced to prison when those in power don't like the reported stories. I'm sure there's a lot more nuance than that and it's a view through…
> From spring straight to winter? That would be Ukraine, where two Russian journalists were killed recently during bombing of Lugansk.
The death of journalists during intense fighting is - while extremely tragic and hopefully rare - not at all comparable to them getting sentenced by courts for simply reporting news. The former is to some degree unavoidable (if they got target specifically then everything changes), while the latter is an explicit act of government against freedom of press and speech.
Re: Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
This kind of thing goes on all the time, all over the world, to varying degrees. It's definitely something I'd read about in The Economist, but it's not at all "intellectually gratifying", and is off topic as a political current event for this site . It's about as intellectually gratifying as the latest world cup results, but maybe not as much as Andrew Talansky's recent victory at the Critérium du Dauphiné, which wa…
And yet, it has made its way to the front page.
If I get together enough people, I could probably get the bike racing results on the front page too!
The fact that people voted for it has no bearing on whether it's off topic. If you want a pure popularity contest, the most "intellectually gratifying" thing out there might turn out to be Justin Bieber articles or something like that.
Here is a previous, more complete comment of mine on why politics is bad for sites like this:
Re: Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet, it has made its way to the front page.
If I get together enough people, I could probably get the bike racing results on the front page too! The fact that people voted for it has no bearing on whether it's off topic. If you want a pure popularity contest, the most "intellectually gratifying" thing out there might turn out to be Justin Bieber articles or something like that. Here is a previous, more complete comment of mine on why politics is bad for sites…
You said it wasn't interesting. I disagreed. It appears others have also. My final word on this. Feel free to have the last word, if you like.
Re: Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt
#35Politics in Hacker News? http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This isn't politics, it's world events. It's also of interest to the HN community. Seriously, stop making these comments.
Where in HN Guidelines it says that these kind of links are acceptability? This is Redditism!
Re: Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt
#36Re: Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I get together enough people, I could probably get the bike racing results on the front page too! The fact that people voted for it has no bearing on whether it's off topic. If you want a pure popularity contest, the most "intellectually gratifying" thing out there might turn out to be Justin Bieber articles or something like that. Here is a previous, more complete comment of mine on why politics is bad for sites…
You said it wasn't interesting. I disagreed. It appears others have also. My final word on this. Feel free to have the last word, if you like.
Ok, I'll try and explain it in another way: it's an interesting bit of news for people like me who follow current events. It's sad to see it happening after the 'Arab Spring', and I wonder how it will affect other countries, what the US reaction to it will be, and so on.
So it's "interesting" and important from a current events/politics point of view. But not at all in a "deeper understanding of the world" way. The latter is what Hacker News should be about. There are tons of sites for the former.
Re: Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where in HN Guidelines it says that these kind of links are acceptability? This is Redditism!
THE FIRST LINE!
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Doesn't say anything so! Moreover, confirms it's off-topic and it's a TV news too.
Re: Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't exactly politics is it? It certainly is about geopolitical event, but not quite one party vs another.
Because we all agree that we hate republicans... I mean egypt? It's political, but it's not US politics, so it seems to pass the 'not political' HN test. Odd, but seems true from my experience.
If the US were putting journalists in Jail, it would be equally relevant. Geo politics, yes, as in whatever is going on between Egypt & Qatar. But I'm interested whenever folks like journalists, artists etc are targeted. Snowden was all over HN & you might argues that's political too, but relevant to this community nevertheless.
Re: Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't exactly politics is it? It certainly is about geopolitical event, but not quite one party vs another.
Doesn't it fall under Political? If so isn't it Off-Topic?
Might fall under political events, but still relevant to the community here IMHO