Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week | Hacker News Reader

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

1,630 pointsdang1,214 comments

Like everyone else, HN has been on a political binge lately. As an experiment, we're going to try something new and have a cleanse. Starting today, it's Political Detox Week on HN.

For one week, political stories are off-topic. Please flag them. Please also flag political threads on non-political stories. For our part, we'll kill such stories and threads when we see them. Then we'll watch together to see what happens.

Why? Political conflicts cause harm here. The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those things are lost when political emotions seize control. Our values are fragile—they're like plants that get forgotten, then trampled and scorched in combat. HN is a garden, politics is war by other means, and war and gardening don't mix.

Worse, these harsher patterns can spread through the rest of the culture, threatening the community as a whole. A detox week seems like a good way to strengthen the immune system and to see how HN functions under altered conditions.

Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones. We can't be both at the same time.

A community like HN deteriorates when new developments dilute or poison what it originally stood for. We don't want that to happen, so let's all get clear on what this site is for. What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive comments. What it is not: a political, ideological, national, racial, or religious battlefield.

Have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we'll try to allay them. This really is an experiment; we don't have an opinion yet about longer-term changes. Our hope is that we can learn together by watching what happens when we try something new.

View on HN

Many of the top-level comments here are against this move. I, on the other hand, would like to express my strong support for this move.

Hacker News has never been an anything-goes site. Tight moderation, considerate rules, and low tolerance for bullshit have made this a great site to talk about interesting technical topics and ideas. Remember that we all abide by the rules of the site, and that this isn't a magic free speech zone. If you want to talk political topics, the Internet has more than enough outlets.

Political discourse is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion. This is not an opinion; look only to sites that allow political discourse (Slashdot?), or even our own comments to see how quickly rational discussion can devolve into flaming. One of the major selling points when I introduce HN to other people is the _absence_ of political topics or discussion: leaving the politics out just produces better technical content.

Also, please consider the idea that politics are regional and differ between countries. In Canada, where I'm from, many of the US political topics would never come up; many European countries might feel even more strongly. As a Canadian, I find American political musings and arguments even less relevant and noisy. By contrast, technological topics are always interesting to me - I can appreciate these, and I love that there's this corner of the Internet where I can participate in a reasoned, interesting technical community. Please don't ruin it with politics, especially the polarizing American variant.

I appreciate that the site is willing to take this step, and I sincerely hope it can keep this site useful, interesting and level-headed for the future.

Thank you. I have a million places I can go for political discussion. Why does HN have to be one of them?

One could argue, that when you live in a democracy, politics are a necessary duty for every citizen. For a democracy to flourish, no place, no topic, no time should be unfit for discussion, because if you forbid politics, you just manifest the status quo, which doesn't have to be a-political!

> For a democracy to flourish, no place should be unfit for discussion

This is obviously false. For example, plenty of democracies have flourished despite having libraries where silence is golden.

> One could argue, that when you live in a democracy, politics are a necessary duty for every citizen.

HN is international and if I recall correctly, more than half of users are not from the USA. Some users don't live in a democracy and some don't believe in it.

Libraries and librarians tend to be opposed to censorship of what they may contain.

> Some users don't live in a democracy and some don't believe in it.

I look forward to arguing with monarchists about their views at some point in the future, then.

>For example, plenty of democracies have flourished despite having libraries where silence is golden.

There is a difference between "not allowed to speak" and "not allowed to speak about politics". You can't speak under water, but a pond isn't the proof that democracy can't exist.

Political discourse is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion.

In fact, what is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion is: emotionally charged, poorly-considered, and dishonest discussion. The topic doesn't matter: health fads, operating systems, or taxes. I agree, many people have terrible style in their approach to political discussion - but see also, e.g. Hobbes and Rousseau for more thoughtful representatives.

Yeah if this were true then most modern governments are doomed because they depend on intelligent political discussions happening.

> The topic doesn't matter

Technically true. But practically speaking, I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. If that's true, then this moderation should boost the general quality of HN comments and topics, which is why most of us come here in the first place. As a comparison, I was initially annoyed that simple jokes / witty remarks that were void of other content were down voted on HN. But long-term I compare it to reddit and agree with the method: I can still go to reddit if I want wit (I often do). I (ideally) come here for high quality technical content.

I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others.

This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or functional programming enough to have an opinion.

Part of the beauty of HN is getting opinions about things that matter in the real world, from people who really think about things.

Compulsory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/451/

> This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or functional programming enough to have an opinion.

This is true, but I suspect the biggest reason is that politics is more prone to Crony Beliefs ( http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ ) than almost any other field of discussion.

I'd wager that we're all more qualified to talk about tech topics than political ones, which is what leads to emotion and bad arguments.

> I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others.

There's a severe danger that you would lose. For a commentary on emotionally charged and intellectually devoid arguments about a technical subject, I give you http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8488235).

But that's not the whole of it, by a long chalk. There have been "the OS Wars", "the editor wars", "the archiver wars", and others. One particularly extreme example that I personally encountered was a group of people in comp.os.os2.advocacy . They did all of the petty and stupid Usenet tricks such as rudely and impatiently splitting paragraphs and sentences to reply to all of the individual words. Much of the level of "argument" was the sort of thing that I'd expect from six-year-olds in a playground: parroting, insults, and general childishness.

I didn't read the newsgroup for the better part of a decade. When I went back to look at it I was astounded to see that the group was still at it, in (as far as I could tell) the same threads with exactly the same content-free taunting and rubbish.

Going back to that newsgroup again today, and picking stuff at random, here's an example of this sort of discourse. From 2011!

* https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy...

Here's a comparison thread randomly selected from the 1990s.

* https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy...

Maybe we should be addressing just that, the larger issue here, in addition to political comments.

I come to Hacker News not only for the submissions but more so for the discussion. I find as of late discussions populated with meaningless content. It seems people feel a need to communicate what they are thinking regardless of the comments usefulness.

I fall prey to this too. If my comments are short I do try to make sure they are helpful in some way. I will try to keep them on-topic and not filled with worthless opinion.

Maybe we should be addressing just that, the larger issue here, in addition to political comments.

Yep. I feel like my first mistake on this site was to argue with every comment I disagreed with. Unless the comment leads to an instructive discussion, it's OK to just downvote it.

This is one of the biggest problems on HN. All it takes is for five people to disagree with a comment and it gets disappeared, as if no one said anything. It's the epitome of an echo chamber. It's the virtual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears--except it's worse, because it essentially plugs the ears of everyone who visits afterwards. How patronizing to those people, preventing them from even hearing ideas that you disagree with.

For a site that is ostensibly focused on intellectual curiosity, this is antithetical to that goal. A robust, informed discussion requires exposure to a variety of perspectives, especially ones that seem challenging or uncomfortable.

If you do not agree with a comment--so what? Either refute it or move on. Just because you are unable or unwilling to refute it does not mean that someone else will not come along after you and do so. Downvoting should be reserved for comments which are truly useless, not comments that you merely disagree with.

And, yes, I am aware that downvoting for disagreement has been promoted and accepted by some on HN, but it's wrong--at least, it is if your actual goal is to have robust, informed discussion of intellectually interesting topics.

Those four paragraphs could have been expressed as a downvote without any loss of meaning.

For me, the more relevant political theorist when it comes to HN's governance is Plato.

Agreed. The recent hate for apple is such an instance of this phenomenon. Every day i see posts about how horrible the new macbook pros are. It's just a damn computer people!

Hobbes once published a book entitled Stigmai ageōmetrias, agroichias, antipoliteas, amatheias, or, Markes of the absurd geometry, rural language, Scottish church-politicks, and barbarismes of John Wallis professor of geometry and doctor of divinity, so he, too, had his intemperate moments.

(Wallis was a political adversary of Hobbes, in case that's not clear)

/agree

One benefit of this community is that technical discussion is exclusive. Not everyone is ready to understand why a relational database might be better than a key value store. This hopefully results in discussion that is based on experience earned expertise.

Politics has virtually no barrier to entry. Consequently, the comment quality declines.

I am so glad about this. The unwashed masses are ruining this site with political drivel.

Some of us unwashed masses [1] loathe political drivel and totally support [2] this move.

1 I only refer to myself as part of the unwashed masses because: A) I am not actually a programmer B) I am incredibly poor and C) I literally do not bathe frequently due to said extreme poverty as I am homeless. ;-)

2 Evidence of total support: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108692

You seem exactly like the type of person that should be here, don't worry :) I don't know what they meant by "unwashed masses", but it kind of seems like there have been a lot of new posters coming here to talk about politics and nothing else. Honestly I think this site started getting mentioned a lot more on Reddit (especially the technology sub), and more people from there started posting here because they felt it was a more civilized place to discuss politics. That's true, but it's also specifically not a politics focused forum (unlike /r/technology) and I think that's messing some people up.

I really wish this top level comment could get some traction. People seem to think that because something is important to them, it should be important to the community but that's not how communities work. I for one feel that no amount of discussion of politics on HN is going to meaningfully change or move forward the debate and is unlikely to be instructive to people who have already made up their minds. What I love about HN is that it's mostly rational. People aren't being rational right now in the political world and while I could see an argument being made for enforcing rationality through strong moderation here, I also think an experiment like this provides value.

It would be interesting to know how they will judge the results of this experiment when it concludes.

> It would be interesting to know how they will judge the results of this experiment when it concludes.

Personally, I don't plan to discuss politics any more or less than when this topic was posted, so I guess I'm not part of the experiment.

> I for one feel that no amount of discussion of politics on HN is going to meaningfully change or move forward the debate and is unlikely to be instructive to people who have already made up their minds.

I feel like healthy political discussion would be a meaningful change. If thoughtful people all abstain from the topic, it will surely get worse. The immediate goal isn't to "win" arguments. It's not to be confused about why someone would disagree. Or even agree! Maybe they do but there's no place to say that.

Removing one of the most intelligent and rational communities from the political debate (albeit temporarily, although I fear that a permanent ban might be considered) will only make the overall political debate even less rational, in addition to taking away a space where technologists can discuss these matters.

I respectfully disagree that discussion of politics on HN cannot "meaningfully change or move forward the debate and is unlikely to be instructive". Indeed, I have witnessed proof that this is not so. I have seen numerous occurrences in comment threads where there has been spirited factual debate which ended up informing both sides. I have seen minds changed. I have experienced my own mind being changed.

I don't deny, of course, that there has been some...less useful discussion, as well. But I feel that overall, it has been positive.

Suggesting that mixing HN and politics will improve HN is like suggesting that mixing wine and poison will improve the poison. The political discussions on HN have been typified by flaming, bullying, groupthink, and appeals to emotion, which tends to ooze out into the less-political topics and damage them too. This site is far better off without them.

I don't know. Even if the flaming and groupthink rhetoric is there, it doesn't mean that there's no one on the other side listening. Maybe they are just spectating and not posting. There is an impact there, but it's not measurable in any conceivable way. That doesn't make it useless though.

I say this as someone whose been that spectator.

Not only do I completely agree, this used to be the policy here, long long ago. Around the time that Aaron Swartz was gaining influence and the Snowden leak happened, it suddenly became a political free-for-all around here and a lot of highly political people showed up and started commenting.

I don't agree that everything is political, unlike most of the protesters above. We have sister sites like lobste.rs that have even less politics than we do and seem to have some useful dialog.

I have always missed the less political atmosphere we used to have and am really glad to see this "cleanse." I hope it helps reinstate some of our culture, even if it is temporary.

No, that's a misunderstanding. The policy hadn't changed, circumstances did. We had to learn from that, and we're still learning.

I appreciate that. Thanks!

> Political discourse is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion.

Not terribly different from discussions of MongoDB, is it?

Your point about regional politics is a really good argument for keeping political discussions out of Hacker News, for the most part. While (I'd guess) the majority of HN users are from the states, there's probably a healthy minority that are not and political discussions, which are almost always US-centric, generally do become noise and have low relevance to them. Even to myself as an American I already see too much political discussion on other sites like Reddit and Facebook that a place that is proactive in disallowing the discussions is a breath of fresh air (or bits, I guess).

I understand it's a little contentious to remove an entire topic of discussion, but I also welcome this and if the experiment goes well I would like to see it go longer term. I'm guilty of engaging in political discussions on HN but I try to moderate my words, but I know there are many who don't moderate their words in part or at all and especially because of how polarized politics seems at the moment (in the US at least) it's maybe a smarter decision to not allow people the opportunity to not moderate their words.

Damn right! Its about time someone took a stance.. HN is slowly becoming reddit.

> In Canada, where I'm from, many of the US political topics would never come up; many European countries might feel even more strongly. As a Canadian, I find American political musings and arguments even less relevant and noisy.

From a British perspective, I find most of the political discussion on HN to be useful, although perhaps I just instinctively avoid some topics. There are a lot of global issues which are being discussed, whether that's climate change, transport, tech and data regulation, job automation, money in politics, licensing and intellectual property, electronic surveillance, global trade, etc.

These are all issues which are relevant to the technology community, as big social issues which are targets for innovation, as moral issues which we have to grapple with, or as concrete barriers which directly impinge on us. I'd say having a space for the technology community to discuss these things is a source of a fair amount of the value of this discussion board.

Having said that, political discussion does have to be subsidiary to technology discussion. Once political discussion gets over a certain level, you're just appealing to a general audience and the forum loses its distinctiveness.

So I sympathize with the moderators. You always have to draw a line in the sand, unfortunately attempting a total ban is going to be just as subjective as what goes on at the moment, which is moderators removing or flagging thread-by-thread (presumably to avoid general topics dominating, or to kill off those particular comment threads which have become toxic). I suggest they just keep on muddling through, and we just acknowledge the process is necessary but messy, and cut them some slack.

I definitely support having a detox.

In the longer run, I think it is good to have some politics on the site. Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum and has a huge amount of intersection with politics. In the past, it has been possible to have rational and nuanced conversations about political issues on HN.

In the recent election cycle, that's been destroyed. It seems to have emboldened people to derail threads with political mud-slinging and the crazies have come out of the woodwork.

To put it simply, I never thought HN would be the place where I was first told to leave the country or get killed. The fact that it was (and not Reddit) honestly depresses me, and I hope that a detox period will force the worst politics out of the forum.

----------

That being said, I see a lot of people pointing to "incivility" as a problem in political threads. That is incredibly wrong. The problem in political threads is twofold: (a) people civilly arguing without actually acknowledging each other's points at all, (b) hateful rhetoric which destroys a sense of community.

If you want evidence of how civility is not the problem, take a look at this thread where a long-time commenter (with >12k karma) civilly, calmly proposed the mass deportation and/or murder of Jews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816

> That being said, I see a lot of people pointing to "incivility" as a problem in political threads. That is incredibly wrong. The problem in political threads is twofold: (a) people civilly arguing without actually acknowledging each other's points at all, (b) hateful rhetoric which destroys a sense of community.

I think you're right that both of those are problems, but they're not the only problem. Incivility is also a problem in political discussions here lately. Another problem lately is that discussions to which a political discussion is only tangentially relevant get derailed by political discussions that exhibit these problems.

> If you want evidence of how civility is not the problem, take a look at this thread where a long-time commenter (with >12k karma) civilly, calmly proposed the mass deportation and/or murder of Jews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816

I disagree with this for two reasons. Firstly, if people could civilly propose the mass deportation and/or murder of Jews, then that wouldn't show that people proposing either that or innocuous things incivilly is not a problem (only that incivility is not the only problem). But here specifically, I don't think that commenter spoke civilly, any more than "No offense, but <some insulting or offensive thing>" is polite (indeed, less so, as the commenter made even less pretense). The civility of discourse isn't independent of the content of that discourse.

>The civility of discourse isn't independent of the content of that discourse.

This statement should probably become a part of civility rules in most communities.

I like the "civil and substantive" aspect of moderation here at HN. I'd also like to see something along the lines of Rapoport's Rules[0] and the Principles of Charity[1] embodied in the community.

Rapoport's Rules:

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

- You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.

- You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

- You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

- Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

[0]: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...

[1]: http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html

I know that dang has been making a concerted effort to encourage the Principle of Charity, something which I definitely commend.

That actually could be a good way to moderate political threads by requiring an even higher standard of conduct. So you must not merely be civil, but actively apply Rapoport's Rules.

Cool! Wonder if it would be worth mentioning it in the guidelines. I can see keeping them relatively brief is worth something, as well.

I can imagine pushback along the lines of enforcing speech rules, which I'm somewhat sympathetic to. That said, I think keeping them in mind is worth it.

> I can imagine pushback along the lines of enforcing speech rules, which I'm somewhat sympathetic to.

That's why I suggest this higher standard for only political threads. It's a lot better than banning them entirely.

Oh, yeah, I understood that. Even some of the long-established users on the site react strongly when they feel their free speech is being encroached upon. I still think it'd be worth a try. (After all, I brought them up :) I know it makes me more understanding of others arguments, not dismissing them in a knee-jerk fashion.

I'm not sure that can work in the cases when Alice and Bob have genuinely different worldviews. Consider, say, economics: the Austrian School and the neo-Keynesian school cannot really be mutually charitable. They're just working in fundamentally different ways. The Austrians believe economics to be a formal science dealing with axiomatic definitions of rational agency and their consequences, while the neo-Keynesian synthesis not only have specific beliefs about "what happens when you do that", they also paradigmatically believe themselves to be engaging in an empirical social science.

Nonetheless, both of them make object-level claims about exactly the same sorts of stuff: which way the markets will go, public policy, etc.

We need a clear, courteous way to talk about situations in which more than one person is trying to predict or prescribe the same object-level thing, but each person in the conversation is bringing completely different paradigms, assumptions, and prior knowledge to the table.

Or to cut to the example that made dang put in the moratorium, an everyday person and a white nationalist are living in extremely different worldviews with extremely different paradigms. This would also be the case where I want content to count for civility: if one side of the conversation is trying to make a courteous, civil, well-written case that the other side should cease to exist, then the line of incivility is crossed, period. There's just not going to be any way for a non-white-nationalist to restate the white-nationalist (ie: neo-Nazi) worldview eloquently, give credit to neo-Nazis where credit is due, and then deconstruct that worldview.

Maybe, in an ideal society, we would expect every citizen to be able to eloquently refute every bad idea. However, in our existing society, our heuristic is to require that citizens only put in the effort to politely discuss or debate content that does not incite or entail violence. When it comes to violence, our heuristic as a society is to protect people first, and ask for justification only much later if at all. We assume that somewhere a philosophy professor, a priest, or a public official can retrieve the arguments against mass violence.

And nowadays, I'm worrying that with the living memory of such violence dying, people are starting to slip into forgetting that there are very good reasons we don't ask for counterarguments against violence.

You're right that civility is probably a problem as well, simply not the only one.

As someone tempted to comment on politics, I'd love for the detox to continue indefinitely, with an instant lifetime ban for the first offence.

HN doesn't add much to politics (it looks just like that kind of discussion would look anywhere else) but politics does detract from HN (firstly because you get less of what HN has that is less prevalent elsewhere, and secondly because politics is great at distracting attention from everything else.)

This would not be a controversial statement if "politics" were replaced with "pornography" and I think the two are, in this context, very much a like - you can have none, or you can have just that one thing as they do in many places and that too "works" in its own way, but having a little works badly.

(And if anything, if HN had porn it'd be easier to ignore it than politics because with politics, not only do you need to avoid the temptation to read about it but also to argue with the harebrained viewpoint in the comments that threatens your family, country and the entire humanity, and then they have to avoid the temptation to push back against my harebrained arguments threatening their family, country and the entire humanity. And just standing there and doing nothing when humanity is at risk, for the sake of a goal so narrow and insignificant as keeping HN about one thing and not another, is very, very hard.)

HN has no ban on porn that I'm aware of; erotica has been upvoted and no doubt will be again.

HN is for what's intellectually interesting—not the other kinds of interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I see no contradiction between being pornographic and being intellectually interesting.

The intersection of the two might be ok, but not the set-difference.

Well sure. It's always been a question of things in the intersection, with politics as well.

(While you're here I'll remind you about turning off flagging on some overly-politicised stories that were being flagkilled earlier this year - if you're worried about HN becoming overly political then that sent the opposite message)

I'm sure we do send opposite messages sometimes, because there are contradictory concerns.

If it is not blatantly political the number of stealth articles people submit can be daunting to filter through. I have more than once found myself reading through an article only to get halfway when the shoe falls. Worse, the super majority are all tilted one way. This is what sank /. in the eyes of many when they let their slant wreck the intelligent discussion of any story.

I don't know if it's good or bad, I don't like to ignore politics, even politics related to hacks/techs, but it could be cool to separate and direct these discussions toward dedicated platforms and focus on original technological ideas here.

What, really, is wrong with noise as long as there is signal?

The only people who care about flaming are the flamed. They should be able to take a good argument, and besides the flamers get modded down. Slashdot is a great example that HN would well to emulate in my opinion. It is in no way an echo chamber.

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 implications of what we've built, and figuring out how to fix our mess. This is like the period before the hurricane: everyone should be busy boarding up windows, and you can't do that if you decide you're just not going to talk about the coming storm because it makes you feel bad.

It doesn't seem like most people on HN want to be politically active here. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm here to learn new things.

And yet, teaching people new things tends to affect the world more than political discussion ever could. I'm happy that HN exists as a solace from the political storm the rest of the world is wrapped up in.

Of course politics will affect each of us. But as tptacek is fond of saying, HN can't be all things to all people. It's more important to preserve the spirit of the site than to affect change. (In fact, it seems like one comes at the cost of the other.)

It's weird to talk about the technical aspects of the Zeppelin if you're not allowed to mention the swastika painted on the tail.

At some point it moves from politics to history. Using facts to discuss the past is not the same as projecting what might happen in the future, or why something in the near past happened, when we don't have nearly enough data to make definitive statements on it. This lack of factual data leads to opinion holding sway, and that leads to inflammatory arguments.

Let's not pretend that we can talk about the current political spectrum with anything near the certainty and information we have about Nazi Germany, the economic policies that were involved at the time, the propaganda used, and the world events at the time.

>At some point it moves from politics to history.

Aside from news and politics itself, I can hardly think of anything more political than history. People with different nationalities and sometimes party affiliations usually have wildly different perception of historic facts. Whether the Holocaust happened or not is an obvious and well-publicized one (I believe it did, for the record), but there's an uncountable amount of subtler and/or less famous differences in how humans perceive history.

>It's more important to preserve the spirit of the site than to affect change.

Who is the deity that gets to determine what the "spirit of the site" is? Is that spirit not simply made up of the collective users and dynamic by nature?

The 'sitegeist', if you will.

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.

idlewords recently organized a meetup to discuss exactly those questions: https://sfbay.techsolidarity.org/2016/11/28/meeting_notes.ht...

This is great. More of this and less mud slinging on HN might actually move the needle.

For comparison, you can view how these very notes were discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085270

I'd rather not. I'm not interested in HNs opinion on those matters. I don't think HN has much to contribute to political discussions honestly. That is why I recommended a side channel for those discussions. Having those discussions in the real world is even better.

Ah! Gotcha. I parsed your statement as

(More of this and less mud slinging) on HN might actually move the needle

as opposed to

(More of this) and (less mud slinging on HN) might actually move the needle

I agree. I would like to figure out a way to encourage civil and constructive discourse on line in the interest of reaching and engaging more people. Offline is very important—probably more important—, as it reinforces the face-to-face social interaction.

>figure out a way to encourage civil and constructive discourse on line in the interest of reaching and engaging more people

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, albeit in a slightly different context than pure politics.

When you say "encourage civil and constructive discourse", it implies that you wish to engage people who disagree. One conclusion I've reached is that it is best to instead engage like-minded people.

The idea of "reaching across" to form consensus or stimulate constructive debate among people who don't agree sounds really good on paper. But, at the end of the day--if you actually want to get anything done--then you don't want to spend your energy convincing people of the rightness of your beliefs. And, looking at this last U.S. election, there seem to be vanishingly few folks for whom facts matter. So much is emotionally-driven that convincing others becomes all the more difficult. It's not impossible, but the ROI just isn't there.

Even if you're not looking into doing something, but just want stimulating discussion, it's a trap at virtually any significant scale. It will inevitably devolve into something emotional and non-constructive. It's unfortunate, but it only takes a few trolls to trash an online community.

Yeah, I've had thoughts along those lines as well. What draws me back from a more isolationist position is a couple of things:

- As online discourse/experience becomes an increasing part of people's lives, the more important it will be to be able to have these types of discussions (and not just pure politics).

- People aren't as binary as the US Presidential election or right/left or whatever other labels would have us believe. There are things people disagree on, and if we're only to engage with people that we agree 100% with, we're not going to have very many people to talk to. It's not so much convincing others as it is finding the commonalities we already share and can easily forget when we see things as black and white.

Anyway, I'm not asking you to agree with those points. Just wanted to elaborate. And I agree with you on the "few trolls" point.

So, having said all that, where do you stand on Political Detox Week? Worth doing?

All this might be solved by tags?

> Talk is cheap and political discussion is especially cheap. How do you propose to lead constructive discussions around these matters

I don't know about 'actionable items', but political conversation isn't any different than other conversations -- civility, the assumption of good faith, and an open mind are more common factors as to whether a discussion is good or bad versus topic.

The problem with political discussion isn't that it's political, it's that America (and possibly elsewhere that I can't speak to) has decided that "my side is good, the other side is bad". This leads to conversations that assume bad faith, and are close-minded, which makes those discussions "bad". You can't fix that with a set of rules, but you can enforce the same rules around those discussions -- people being rude, snarky or dismissive would be subject to censure, while people who are being courteous, informative and civil would not.

In short, I maintain that the problem with political discussions versus other discussions is that we treat them as different than other discussions. At their best, they can be a productive means of informing others to facts they may not have been aware, or elevating one's opinion from a basic understanding to a more nuanced understanding. But the more special we treat politics, the more the regular rules suffer, and blanket policies banning politics foster this special status in which vitriol becomes normalized, regimented and de rigueur.

So long as incivility is normal, the greater our partisan divides will grow.

Don't you think your post rings of false equivalency? How do you discuss in "good faith" ideas like white nationalism?

How do you discuss in "good faith" ideas like white nationalism?

You discuss it the same way you discuss any other idea in good faith:

by evaluating the content on its message, not on the presuppositions you might have for its messenger;

by evaluating each topic in isolation on its own, and trying to determine whether or not any individual point has merit or not, how much merit it may have, and where it does not have merit, explaining why you consider it meritless;

by being open-minded enough to not dismiss individual points because you disagree with the central thesis;

by putting forth your best arguments, and letting the stronger argument win the day, unblemished by vitriol;

by being civil and courteous to your fellow man because as humans, they're deserving of at least a civil, open minded discussion.

It is also worth noting that there is a difference between discussing white nationalism itself and discussing the impact of it and if it needs to be curtailed.

For example, let's look at Google's Trusted Contacts. For obvious reasons, a lot of HN are very opposed to it. One topic that was brought up was the Google Buzz disaster and how google pre-built the community based on who we had emailed and talked to. Which was very dangerous for people who had an abusive ex.

If that were to launch today (and something similar will...), white nationalism becomes a huge problem. All of those bloggers and twitter folk who decide to NOT shove their head in the sand and actually engage and speak up are suddenly going to have their other contacts exposed. The people who have friends who speak against Breitbart are now directly exposed.

And that is a pretty big tech AND social issue. And to ignore the problem with a large movement of people who tend to be more armed than their political spectrum counterparts and who have a long history of getting their way through abuse is horrifically negligent.

And considering that white nationalist parties/candidates are gaining political office in many western nations, it becomes even more of an issue. Can we discuss political legislature that seems to specifically target tech geared toward helping inner city youths (who tend to be black)? What about a marked tendency for facial recognition and profiling software that applies a color wheel to determine threats to gain funding?

All of that is political, all of that is very heavily influenced by understanding that it is white nationalist parties pushing it, and all of that MUST be discussed.

Here we go.

> friends who speak against Breitbart

> people who tend to be more armed

> a long history of getting their way through abuse

> white nationalist parties/candidates

Are you talking about white nationalists, or actually about conservatives/Trump/Breitbart, tarring them as violent and abusive along the way?

There is considerable overlap between the groups. I find your inability to acknowledge that fact toxic and a hurdle to honest dialogue.

Prove it.

You label me "toxic" and dishonest, but you want me to just accept your assumptions? My "honest" dialogue is based on verifiable facts, not speculative slander.

This claim is so utterly ridiculous at it's face.

How many white nationalists are there? How many conservatives are there?

So you are saying because A is a subset of B, then I cannot claim overlap? Because you refuse to acknowledge the reality of racial identity politics? I guess when the White Nationalists meet in DC to do their Sig Heil in support of Trump (this literally happened) or vandalize churches in DC (this literally happened) we can all pretend that the dialogue attacking minorities is unrelated to white nationalism? That sites like Breitbart who push these racially charged stories can wash their hands while they collect ad revenue from stirring up racial violence?

I disagree.

> dialogue attacking minorities is unrelated to white nationalism?

Why lump an explicitly extreme group in with one that isn't so? Would you do the same with Muslims and Muslim extremists?

> sites like Breitbart who push these racially charged stories

A few examples? The daily mail, yes, but what of Breitbart in particular?

On a completely unrelated note: While I do feel that political discussion is a necessity for any site that claims to be about cutting edge technology and ideas, there are also times you just should not engage. A good rule of thumb is that if a post is immediately antagonistic (and in all fairness, yours kind of was too) or ignores everything in the interest of isolating one phrase that MIGHT be disputable, it isn't.

Which is kind of why I think this entire "detox", much like just about every detox that is about getting rid of the antioxidants or whatever the hell people go to spas for, is a load of bull. The problem isn't the topic, it is how people discuss it. And people discuss plenty of topics in overly emotional and pedantic ways. Often times while extolling their own intelligence in a way that makes you REALLY glad they aren't in the same room as you (HN may be even worse than reddit on that last point).

Respond to posts that can have a discussion. Ignore the ones that can't.

> ignores everything in the interest of isolating one phrase

Why? If it's a valid criticism, why not. Sure, reading into things that take the thread into some tangent is bad; but otherwise, a call for clarification, even if nit-picking, is hard to judge objectively.

> The problem isn't the topic, it is how people discuss it

I agree, but only through objective and explicit guidelines can this be fixed.

> Ignore the ones that can't.

What I dislike more than a topic that is uninteresting to me, is people who also find it uninteresting, and yet comment on the fact. I don't dislike HN posts about apple, because I never read those posts, and it's usually obvious from the title what they are about.

> The problem isn't the topic, it is how people discuss it.

Of course. Yet there are obvious correlations to certain topics, and there might be a connection between the "how people discuss it" and the capacity to take a week off from it once in a while.

I thought we weren't supposed to make generalizations here. Gasp, shock, horror!

Also, are you really taking the correlation route in the pseudo-intellectual argument for why there is a ban?

Because if we are just going by correlation: Any time security or privacy is a topic, people stop reading anything and just start speaking from The Heart (just look at the Google Trusted Contacts thread where a significant chunk of the posters have no idea what the app even is...). So clearly that topic should be banned too, right? I mean, there is a clear and obvious correlation between topics about security and privacy and people having emotional discussions. So ban it

In all seriousness: It is your product and you do with it as you see fit. Just understand that people used to love Google and Facebook until they decided (rightly or wrongly) that they were just a commodity and that they were giving their personal information and opinions to an entity that had no problems doing experiments to figure out how to better target them. And with crap like this, it won't take long for people to realize that the company built around knowing what tech to invest in may have an ulterior motive for hosting a board for Cutting Edge Tech (TM) and may be using the data for less than kosher reasons. And crap like this is a good way to trigger a burst of thought from people.

> Also, are you really taking the correlation route in the pseudo-intellectual argument for why there is a ban?

Since dang sees all the user flags he probably has a better idea of which discussions get flagged -- which discussions trigger heated arguments.

If a human moderator is viewing them, it's not purely correlation.

it won't take long for people to realize that the company built around knowing what tech to invest in may have an ulterior motive for hosting a board for Cutting Edge Tech (TM) and may be using the data for less than kosher reasons.

Would you expand on this? What ulterior motives do you have in mind? What do you think HN is using the data for? Most of the data is available through the API, so pretty much anyone can use the data for whatever purpose they'd like.

You can discuss anything in good faith, but how many white nationalism discussions are there on HN?

A complete blackout of anything the political community decides is important is strange. I understand the danger of political flame wars, but interesting issues will often become politicized. Climate change and privacy have obviously become political, but that doesn't make those topics less interesting intellectually.

edit: grammer

>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.

This is why I support a moratorium on politics here. This kind of assumption and hyperbole is really off-putting. I'm happy to debate these topics, but not here.

Now, that said, it's going to be a little murky. For example, I want to examine Ed Ou's detention at the US border. What if something breaks about Snowden or Assange? How about net neutrality?

The "assumption and hyperbole" you mention is based upon things our president elect has said he will do.

I think this is exactly the place to do it as the people who would be involved in its creation are likely here. Where else would be a better place?

He never said he'd "create a national Muslim registry", (assuming "muslim registry" means "a registry of all muslims); it was just implied that he did.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/24/...

"No, he would not rule out a database on all Muslims. But for now, he wants a database for refugees."

And most importantly - it wasn't him that brought up the idea, he was asked this "John F. Kennedy is not a homosexual"-style. The fact that he failed to clarify either way was then reported in ambiguous snippets giving the impression that he had brought this up.

Even an insinuation that someone has a connection with an undesirable group apparently makes it legitimate to repeatedly ask them about it. I think such a low-bar to interrogation is not enough; sometime even being repeatedly asked something can give the impression that it might be true (or more likely), "big lie"-style.

How is it "assumption and hyperbole" to take statements at face value? The incoming administration is on the record with their intents.

When the statements themselves are hyperbole. Look at how many details about the wall have changed.

I don't understand why people on the left assume he was lying all of the times he delivered toned down statements and was only telling the truth when at the most extreme.

> I don't understand why people on the left assume [that Trump is dangerous and unpredictable and changes his mind more often than a traffic light].

Make sense now?

You just agreed with me. If he's disingenuous there is no reason to believe he will build a list of Muslims from Facebook.

That isn't what was said at all.

What we have is a future president (ugh...) who has repeatedly shown himself to change his mind at the drop of a hat, be easily engaged and enraged on social media, and who has a long career (since long before he even considered running or POTUS in the 90s) of racism and misogyny (not to mention admitting to and taking pride in sexual assault...).

The fact that we DON'T know what he truly intends to do is terrifying, and that is why people discuss it. We know what he has said he intends to do .We know that some stuff he has backpedaled on, only to come back a few days later. That is exactly why people feel a need to discuss it.

And we also know that his vice president and growing cabinet are much more consistently "on message".

> admitting to and taking pride in sexual assault

Care to elaborate? Or is this more second-hand media?

> The fact that we DON'T know what he truly intends to do is terrifying

Depends if you're happy with the status-quo, or unhappy with it. For some, the idea of things staying the same are terrifying.

Incidentally, were you not worried about a Dem war with Russia?

>That isn't what was said at all.

Ok. When did he say he would build a list of Muslims from Facebook? What is that based on?

Obama actually did target conservatives with the IRS[1] and nobody on here wasting time speculating what he might or might not do even though he clearly does things that weren't in his campaign speeches and lied about other things ("you can keep your plan"[2]).

My point is that suddenly a ton of young liberal people that lived most of their adult life with Democrat in the white house have someone they didn't vote for in office and they don't have the maturity to deal with it. It's constant over-the-top messaging about the end of the country and when Republicans did the same thing during Obama's presidency ("death panels", "secret muslim", etc), they were laughed out of the room as they should have been. It's embarrassing coming from the side that touted things like "facts tend to be liberal".

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

2. http://www.politifact.com/obama-like-health-care-keep/

It's better to be consistent and dangerous? That was the other candidate.

Another interpretation: this is political, literally. "abortions for some, mini american flags for others" can sort of work. We just know as little about what Trump flim-flams about as we do other candidates consistently lie about.

>When the statements themselves are hyperbole. Look at how many details about the wall have changed.

>I don't understand why people on the left assume he was lying all of the times he delivered toned down statements and was only telling the truth when at the most extreme.

As someone on the left, it bothers me too. The guy has said many, sometimes mutually contradictory or impossible things, and has never given any indication of having reached some final disposition on anything. People somehow ignore everything he says that they could agree with as random lies, but analyze every year old tossed off tweet where he references some irrational policy or false fact as established policy of the next administration.

He creates a precarious environment for businesses that rely on established relationships with the traditional Republican and Democratic leadership group, and a precarious environment for minority groups due to his white identity politics pandering during the campaign. It's created such a distorted public discourse around the man that somehow Ted Cruz got painted as a more reasonable alternative. The institutional media attacks him in order to defend their business interests, and the majority (who are each a minority in some way), defend any media critique uncritically. The guy is not the devil, it's just in your interests to paint him as the devil if he isn't friends with the congresspeople that you own, and he's said enough contradictory stuff that your job is easy. Really, on social issues he ran as a mainstream Republican but with faux straight talk rhetoric that felt like it went further when it really didn't - if you're terrified of him, you should have been terrified of any of them. There are Muslim registries, they're just locked within accountable and unexaminable intelligence organizations, large and small. There is a wall. These were institutions born from bipartisanship.

Nevertheless, he's dangerous as any president could be, and more unpredictable than any president we have ever had. It's more important that we talk about the stuff he has said, not less. Whether or not you take it at face value is irrelevant when it's all you have to plan around. What's the alternative; to wait and see, and after it happens, start thinking about it? You shouldn't need to assume the earthquake will result in a tsunami to start preparing for it.

Your comment shows something that does disturb me on HN, though - comments that are being flagged for disagreement, rather than downvoted.

This is not hyperbole.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/20/donal...

> Donald J. Trump, who earlier in the week said he was open to requiring Muslims in the United States to register in a database, said on Thursday night that he “would certainly implement that — absolutely.” Mr. Trump was asked about the issue by an NBC News reporter and pressed on whether all Muslims in the country would be forced to register. “They have to be,” he said. “They have to be.’’ ... Asked later, as he signed autographs, how such a database would be different from Jews having to register in Nazi Germany, Mr. Trump repeatedly said, “You tell me,” until he stopped responding to the question.

That quote is from 2015. If everyone held people to what they said a year ago despite them softening on the issue or even changing their mind completely... well then why is Obama so highly regarded by the left?

> That quote is from 2015. If everyone held people to what they said a year ago despite them softening on the issue or even changing their mind completely...

Ok, this is reasonable. There have been some indications that Trump might be softening on the issue. Language alluding to this policy was removed from his campaign website on election night, for instance, and it hasn't really come up since (at least from him). I'm still very concerned that it was said at all, but you can certainly make an argument that this statement doesn't represent the current state of things.

> well then why is Obama so highly regarded by the left?

You have veered into defensive tribalism. We are not discussing in what regard Trump is held, but rather the likelihood of him implementing a particular policy based on what he has said about it. Whether or not liberals forgave Obama's transgressions is irrelevant to a muslim registry.

I was hesitant to support dang's (OP's) idea but this is pushing me towards it.

you put Trump quotes after descriptions of the questions he is answering, but why not quote the questions too?

NYTimes didn't provide those, right?

"While many headlines came out after this exchange saying Trump would "absolutely" require Muslims to register in a database, it’s not entirely clear that’s what he said."

"Through the end of the conversation, it’s possible Trump thought the exchange was about illegal immigration."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/24/...

Tell me what you think of Trumps reply wrt that last "Nazi Germany" question from NBC?

Interesting, there was more ambiguity than I was initially aware of. From the article you've linked, it does sound plausible that Trump thought he was talking about illegal immigration (for at least the initial question, not sure about the follow up questions). However, as the article notes, further attempts to clarify his position later do not show him unequivocally distancing himself from it.

I think it's fair to say that we can't be totally certain what the intention of his administrations are; though this is trivially true in all cases, I never seriously questioned the possibility of such a thing with previous administrations. As I mentioned in another comment, failing to distance himself from such a comment when given the opportunity later does alarm me.

> Tell me what you think of Trumps reply wrt that last "Nazi Germany" question from NBC?

I read it as ducking the question. What do you make of it?

I think he essentially ignored the question, and the reporter. In that case, it wasn't an interview.

I think since comments made by Trump to NBC and CNN around Nov 20th, it is now unclear whether he wants a muslim registry for domiciled muslims, or a registry for muslims coming from certain nations (according to Fox anyhow: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/11/20/trump-causes-fire...)

The so-called "assumption and hyperbole" have historical precedence though. You may want to review the history of 1930s Germany.

Not to mention that "can we please stop with all the politics" is not political neutrality, it's a position that supports the status quo.

Silence assists certain forms of repression.

Precisely. When you hear the phrase "can we stop talking about politics" it is almost always coming from the privileged who are benefiting massively from the status quo.

And it's already the case on HN that political discussions are quickly flagged into oblivion, so I'm not sure how this current week will be any different.

I was pretty let down that HN did not do more to protect political discussions during the US election cycle and I really didn't see all that much vitriolic behavior in the first place. Even if there is bad behavior though, is that something that we need to be protected from at all times? Maybe it is better to let it happen, point it out when we see it, and then hopefully learn to discuss more civilly as a community in the future.

A much better course of action would be attempts to improve political discourse, rather than demonize the adjective.

They've tried, hard, for some time now. Look through dang's and sctb's comment history to see how hard they've tried to improve the discourse.

I think a reform of the guidelines would be more effective. Not every mod-comment is seen.

I also think that specific flags would help, i.e. flag a comment that is against some guideline, with reference to the rule it broke.

What guidelines would you suggest?

You would be in a better position to notice common fallacies etc, but any "list of logical fallacies" is a good starting point, especially those fallacies that can be used to insult, or insinuate, E.g. Specific guidelines about ad-homs. This would also include advice not to use personal information/ circumstances in an argument, unless you are happy to see them criticised.

One of the worst fallacies, us probably the kind that removed the civility from a discussion, and hence the good faith.

As a side note, the worst kinds of guideline is an ambiguous one, that leaves a lot to interpretation, e.g "act civil" is itself a nice rule, but otherwise useless, better off as a heading above specific clarifications.

HN doesn't need to be Wikipedia wrt comment rules, but a few Wikipedia style rules might be good.

> I really didn't see all that much vitriolic behavior in the first place.

There is a setting in your options called "showdead". Is that on or off for you? If it's set to off HN will hide some comments that have been killed by userflags. Thus, you may well have not seen the worst examples.

But this week someone (with more than 10k karma and an account that's over 3000 days old) called for Jews to relocate:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816

> But, yes, to the extent the inchoate Alt Right has a position on it, one of them is that Jews are to be "excluded if not eliminated from society", as in all societies that are not Israel. You've got your own homeland now, which we of the Alt West fully support, relocate yourself there. Specifically "diversity + proximity = war", and we want to avoid "war" such as it is or will be.

And the problem isn't politics. It is someone posting the crap that spews out of their mouth. I have seen just as many "Jesus H-Dawg Christ... do they actually believe that?" posts regarding the navel gazing that is "Oh, we are above everyone and people have trouble understanding us because we are technical human beings who must communicate precisely because technology" and all the smugness stereotypically associated with SV startup culture. Not to mention people doing their best to mimic political shouting near each other in the Google Trusted Contacts thread.

The problem isn't topics. The problem is posters. If it was even tangentially related to tech (a new start-up community in a ghetto?), someone could post a well thought out and reasoned statement arguing against ethnic diversity. I would be amazed if they did, but anything is possible. Just like people can post incredibly shortsighted and emotional crap about what text editor to use.

So rather than make a blanket (and half-assed, at that) statement on a topic being banned (will be interesting to see what gets removed and what/who YC are financing or partnering with in the near future...), remove the negative posts while leaving the good.

> There is a setting in your options called "showdead". Is that on or off for you? If it's set to off HN will hide some comments that have been killed by userflags. Thus, you may well have not seen the worst examples.

This is a new account of mine but I have accounts going back many years. I usually flip [showdead] to 'yes' as soon as I get reminded by seeing a [flagged] comment.

> But this week someone (with more than 10k karma and an account that's over 3000 days old) called for Jews to relocate

I don't like that comment either at all, but I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad to know that someone who is solidly part of our community thinks that way and that someone who's probably very smart otherwise can simultaneously hold an opinion like that.

If we just ban that person or even worse disallow a wide swath of conversation topics, what good does it do? hga will still believe that (and he mostly expressed himself civilly, I guess). Are you worried that his ideas will spread? This may be where our mindset differs, but I believe the best and only course of action is for people like you and me respond civilly and with reason, and to prove why hga is misguided.

This is a bit of an aside, but related. What's the appropriate response to someone who continues to post civilly and substantively but unceasingly on a topic, even when asked not to? Is it a type of trolling? Is asking them to stop silencing their voice? Or some sort of "agree to disagree"?

Another issue: when do some topics go beyond the pale and must not be tolerated? Is there such a point?

Perhaps these are off-topic for this thread, but they've been on my mind as part of the larger issues "detox week" is intended to address.

> This is a bit of an aside, but related. What's the appropriate response to someone who continues to post civilly and substantively but unceasingly on a topic, even when asked not to? Is it a type of trolling? Is asking them to stop silencing their voice? Or some sort of "agree to disagree"?

Probably to just stop replying to them. Sum up your thoughts and respectfully let them know that you've made your point as well as you can, and that this will be your last response. Or, the site could have a feature to block certain users for a period of time so that you just don't have to see it.

> Another issue: when do some topics go beyond the pale and must not be tolerated? Is there such a point?

Not for me, though I know I have a radical view on what should be the limits (or lack thereof) of freedom of speech. In reality though, there are certain types of speech that are illegal and so I understand that moderators will do what they have to in those situations.

I've also been thinking about these things. I am making a real-time reddit clone for fun and I am trying to strike upon a system that keeps discussion civil and substantive with as little need as possible for moderation. Not saying that every place on the internet should be a haven for freedom of speech though, and I really appreciate what dang and the other mods do here. By and large, I have few complaints about how HN is run and they've come up with many good ideas for algorithmically cooling down the flame wars (e.g. not allowing immediate replies when discussion gets heated).

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I appreciate it. The tension between creating a sustainable, civil community while still permitting effective freedom of expression is particularly difficult, in my opinion, and a worthwhile goal. Different communities do have different standards.

I look forward to the Show HN for your project! :)

This is a solved problem on usenet for decades, and that's the killfile [1]. It could be automated further by sharing killfiles (e.g. agree to add all of @Alice and @Bob's killfile as mine) or having a community killfile (ie, hellbanning)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file

> This may be where our mindset differs, but I believe the best and only course of action is for people like you and me respond civilly and with reason, and to prove why hga is misguided.

Sorry, but I don't think hga is merely "misguided."

He believes I should be forcibly deported to Israel and, if I refuse, should be killed. This isn't a belief that you argue with people about. We fought a world war against this belief.

You don't deal with neonazis by arguing with them. Whether Jews are equal humans or not should not be open to debate. You deal with neonazis by ignoring and/or banning them.

As much as I hate the doctrine of safe spaces, there's also the fact that I believe I should be able to come on Hacker News and expect to not have people calling for me to be murdered. Sorry if that's too much to ask.

How can you come to such a conclusion?

"Can we stop with the politics" doesn't take away your right to protest or discuss politics _elsewhere_. It just means someone is tired hearing the same arguments rehashed over and over on HN.

> tired hearing the same arguments rehashed

I'm tired of people not getting it the first time

That's one point of view. Another is that the people who speak the loudest about political issues have the most support and political power.

What else does status quo mean?

> Silence assists certain forms of repression.

So does sleep. Stop sleeping.

EDIT: Hours not spent fighting fascism are hours spent supporting it, right?

You're correct. Hours spent concern trolling are hours spent failing to oppose fascism.

Sorry. That comment is one among many I wish I could take back on HN.

I liked it.

It expresses, succinctly, the problem with 'either you are with me or against me', and its evily-more-persuasive cousin 'there is no apolitical speech'.

Sometimes I wish I was more apolitical, for my own sake, and if this defends the status-quo, so be it. What was the chance of making any difference anyway?

We are talking about specialization here, not repression.

There are tons of political forums where ppl can express their opinions and discuss them.

It just does not have to be here.

There are tons of tech forums too, are there not?

In fact, sub-reddit provides all the specialization you could need; I think "demographic" is usually what is valued in HN.

It's not about "political neutrality", though.

Imagine HN banning crypto-related discussion for a week after the Snowden revelations, because it was too hard to deal with.

Well, Paul actually did change the ranking algorithm to penalize anything Snowden or NSA-related. He also adjusted the ranking to penalize discussions of TSA policies which directly affect entrepreneurs who have to travel in and to the US. And the discussions at the time were much the same as now - people (including me) saying "hey wait a second these are very much on topic" and others saying "but it makes us uncomfortable to discuss the political aspects of technology, let's pretend it that an arbitrarily-enforced rule of 'no politics' is apolitical"

I support political discussions, but I also support these weightings. Without them the site would've talked of nothing else. It was a huge amount of stories which all got massive amount of upvotes.

I think we should aim for reasonable ratios. Maybe we should have an algorithm that categorized stories and tried to create a certain ratio of tech:politics:curiosities:startups, for example?

This moratorium will only last a week. I think our discourse will survive. Though political discussion is essential, I think you'd agree it has downsides when there's too much of it or when everyone considers it high-stakes.

The way I see it, the mods are asking us all to hold our political tongues and see what the comments feel like. They're very clear that it's an experiment. Maybe when politics resume seven days from now, people will remember what quality discourse looks like. This is mods trying to keep the conversation good.

But politics is high-stakes. How could it be otherwise? It is deciding what we, as a people, want to be.

Some people have more at stake than others.

It will only last a week... a week in which the president-elect is meeting with some top Silicon Valley people. And a week in which any discussion or stories about that will be conveniently automatically off-topic.

Write it up as an article with proof or a convincing argument. Submit it and it'll be front page on HN pretty quick.

Obviously that's a pure coincidence. The idea that HN moderators have prior information about presidential meetings is (from where I sit) completely silly, and certainly totally wrong.

> The idea that HN moderators have prior information about presidential meetings is (from where I sit) completely silly,

It is silly, but not completely silly.

One doesn't have to cross over into tinfoil-hat territory to wonder if sama, paulg, or other YC partners knew about the meeting ahead of time. Assuming they knew, it then isn't outlandish to wonder if they nudged the moderators into doing the experiment now as opposed to some other time without disclosing the reason.

That said, I don't subscribe to this chain of suppositions (or at least, I don't assign it more than ~10% chance of being true).

In any case, even if any YC partners did know about the meeting, I imagine they would be paying more attention to the absence of YC portfolio companies from the invitation list rather than considering new moderation policies to shape discourse on HN to their (supposed) advantage.

> and certainly totally wrong.

Having little reason to doubt you, and considerably more to take you at your word, this is more than good enough for me under the circumstances.

And this type of comment is precisely why I support a ban on political discussion on HN. You're just preaching to the choir. I've read this same comment in one form or another for hundreds, if not thousands of times on HN. If anything, a dissenting opinion (e.g. one in favor of Trump or the NSA) could add something new to the conversation but it would get down voted to hell and get ugly pretty fast.

>If anything, a dissenting opinion (e.g. one in favor of Trump or the NSA) could add something new to the conversation but it would get down voted to hell and get ugly pretty fast.

I'll take the bait.

About a little of a year ago, when I worked in a lab, some of my colleagues routinely laughed and mocked Trump and boasted how he had no chance in hell (as well as fueling fire with continued patronage of sites and news that gave them more of the same "entertainment" [in their words]), and no amount of me pointing out to them the environment that enabled a such a persona to exist/rise to fame/power should be the topic of conversation rather than on the team $x circus ring leader de jour.

From where I stand, the problem with a ban on political discussion isn't really the content of it, just the intellectual naivety that one can shield themselves political discussion while ignoring all the not so hidden influences of such on ones culture, thought processes, and etc is laughable will only end in rude awakenings, because in reality such a ban can only be superficial, and never really cut to the heart of such issues that underpin political discussion.

Like another commentator said: "Talk is cheap and political discussion is especially cheap" and I'd add that superficial bans to hide or sideline political discussion, are can be incredibly expensive (filter bubbles, walled gardens, deep packet inspections, paid "moderators", "cultural fit" selectors) in the search of temporarily being in control, yet ultimately futile.

This!

HN is one of the few places where informed discussion is actually possible and even opposing views (as long as they are objective and well reasoned) are adding to the discussion (and often upvoted). Shutting that off just because of some unfounded downvotes or trolling in times where such discussions are extremely important is cowardly and a very sad move in my opinion. HN is better (and more important) than you think.

also it is hard to define the boundaries of 'political discussions'. A lot of events in the tech world have political implications - examples like data retention policies/what data is gathered at all.

In any event its an editorial decision: HN is a medium/tool of ycombinator and they decided that this is necessary in order to preserve its value.

You can't bully people into caring about things, sorry. Most people here would rather talk about solar power or functional programming than the political implications of whatever, and trying to guilt them into cooperation is just going to make them crankier.

Nobody is asking them to participate in these discussions. I could not care less about anything posted to HN relating to Windows or MacOS, but I wouldn't downvote those posts just because I personally have no interest in them.

I don't mean to offend, but I think that this is not a rational comment. I think it illustrates my point that rational discourse can rapidly become irrational when politics get involved. Again, I stress that this is why I am strongly in favor of a moratorium on politics on HN.

You express a fear that Trump is going to somehow strongarm, subpoena, or otherwise force tech companies to roll over and give over private data on every Muslim in the US. Notwithstanding the massive technical challenge involved there, I'm fairly certain such a request would be met with significant opposition at some stage - from judicial challenges, to company refusal, to public backlash. It simply is not a situation that can reasonably happen (especially quietly), no matter how loudly Trump might yell about it.

Additionally, you must keep in mind that a sizeable fraction of the population had very similar fears (re: gun control, healthcare, socialism, etc.) when Obama was elected in 2008. These folks were scared of what Obama would do based on what he promised to do. In the end, checks and balances won out, and Obama didn't end up doing many of the things he promised to do. (He's still a great president, though - in my opinion of course).

It's normal to be scared in these times, but it's not a good idea to lose your head. Trump can say a lot of terrible, terrible things - people are literally entitled to say whatever they want in this country - but if you rationally analyze the feasibility of his plans you'll realize that most of them aren't actually doable. And, you may also realize that some of his plans are even good for the country - for example, infrastructure spending is a proven way to improve the economy, and it is something that the US quite desperately needs (see: John Oliver).

Now, I shouldn't need to say this on a forum like this, but I am by no means a fan of Trump. I think that his rhetoric is dangerous, but he _is_ going to be president, and that means working with him to establish the best policies and compromises going forward, rather than stubbornly refusing outright to work with him.

I think it's not about politics specifically. All social sciences can get quickly irrational because they're not mathematised. Every one of us is subjective to framing.

You can argue that e.g. "Obama was a great president!" or that "Obama was an awful president!" and there are arguments to back both sides of the discussion depending on where you're coming from.

I'm not sure what the "massive technical challenge" would be in this case. Facebook already allows ad targeting based on relevant characteristics such as race, Google has significant data on users, etc. It would be complex, but not difficult to query these datasets.

The political opposition is likely to collapse in waves: public opinion seems to be moving towards intolerance, and any additional terrorist attacks related to Islam would continue the shift; the GOP controlled Congress may support Trump as vehemently as they have opposed Obama; the 105 federal judicial vacancies that should have been filled by Obama will instead be filled by Trump, possibly including multiple Supreme Court seats; and it will be very difficult for the companies themselves to fail to comply with court orders. For example, look at the huge battle to coerce Apple to unlock a single phone. Under a Trump presidency there would be substantially more pressure on tech companies.

My experience with conservative, religiously-motivated Americans (including many dear friend and family members) while growing up in a red state makes me think that (some subset) may be willing to tolerate substantial harm to themselves, the economy, and the founding principals of the USA so long as the "greater good" is achieved: prohibiting abortion, increasing the influence of Christianity on government, increased need for religious charity due to reduced social welfare programs, and the lower taxes that they've been told are a panacea. This makes me believe that compromising with Trump will look more like acquiescing to him.

I also think that some portion of the the conservative-leaning public was misled about Obama and were afraid of what they thought he would do, not what he said he would do. What could have been reasonable compromises about restricting certain types of gun sales and ownership, controlling healthcare costs through single payer policies or some other government intervention (which are considered mainstream in other first world countries) were opposed as a slippery slope to elimination of private gun ownership and destruction of American capitalism. These were not rational fears, but were effective at catalyzing conservative voters.

Since Snowden's intervention we know that technology is being used to aggressively lay the foundation of a (future? potential?) totalitarian regime.

How can technology be separated from the subject of power when the future of democracy in the most powerful nation in the World is at stake?

Unfortunately, if you're not turned onto politics, politics will turn on you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3dvbM6Pias

The idea that we can carve out a space that exists outside of politics and ideology is delusional.

Ideology is present everywhere. It's built in to the ways we relate to each other, to our employers, to the public and private institutions and technologies we interact with all the time, and especially the way we work and conceive of work. Ideology is often tacit, baked into our assumptions even in "non-political" areas.

Squelching political discussion won't cause us all to transcend ideology, it'll just make it impossible to discuss or critique a dominant ideology whenever one shows up in someone's unstated assumptions.

This is a bad idea and a little dystopian (the world is upside down, but think happy thoughts, folks! Here's a TED talk!)

Not to mention I didn't really see a huge problem on the site, so in a time when politics and ideology are on everyone's minds for good reason, it seems you've chosen to solve a non-problem with censorship.

Of course it's delusional. The concepts can't be defined to begin with, nor can they be separated in any consistent way. And still we have to moderate this site.

> the world is upside down, but think happy thoughts, folks! Here's a TED talk!

It's sort of a peeve of mine that people project this onto us because I can't say how I really feel about it without breaking our own rules.

> people project this onto us

You might be suggesting an unconscious and in a sense innocent psychological bias.

I also allow that a comment like the GP is in a style intended to twist and inflame. In this context the motivation could be to keep HN on the trajecory of more noise.

> people project this into us because I can't say how I really feel about it without breaking our own rules.

Perhaps people aren't projecting so much as seeing your rules as a reflection of your beliefs, which you now say they are not.

Perhaps grounding your moderation policies around concepts you know are undefined and inseparable isn't the best basis for moderating the site.

As for how people see your actions: labeling it as "projecting" might make you feel better, but probably gets in the way of you understanding what they're saying.

In today's environment, you can't simultaneously make the site an welcoming place for people who are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti-trans (etc.) - and for people who are Muslim, immigrant, women, trans and nonbinary people (etc) or allies to any of these groups. What people are telling you is that they see YC - and you personally - as siding with the bigots.

It's the best basis for moderating the site because the alternative is impossible.

You're right, though, that I shouldn't use the word 'project' like that.

It's not impossible to say "this is a technology site, here we discuss technology" which would make it much less arbitrary which things are politics and not. You might not want to do that, but it's certainly not impossible as an alternative. "Technology only week" is probably even an easier sell for an experiment.

HN is not a technology site. It's a site for "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity":

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> HN is not a technology site. It's a site for "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"

Does political discussion not gratify intellectual curiosity? I'd say that I'm definetly curious to see others political opinions. This is a ban on a discussion topic as arbitrary as banning discussion of IC vs Passives.

Not letting people hear opposing view points is more detrimental then seeing a view point you disagree with.

Does political discussion not gratify intellectual curiosity?

Yes, political discussion can gratify intellectual curiosity. Empirically it hasn't worked out very well on HN.

To me, your comment completely ignores the paragraphs written by dang in the submission, both the content, and the fact that it's temporary. What do you think of the intent? Do you disagree? Have you seen or participated in any of the recent (past two or three months) of political threads on HN? Do you have showdead on so you can see what's being posted and flagged? Do you think it's okay? If you don't agree with the intent or think there is an issue, that would put your comment in one context. If you agree it's an issue and disagree with the political detox week, then that's another. Would you elaborate on your comment?

> Yes, political discussion can gratify intellectual curiosity. Empirically it hasn't worked out very well on HN.

I disagree. It's worked out smashingly well on HN (judgingnit context of 25 or so years of engagement in online fora of various types); the appearance that it has not is due to unrealistic standards, and radical reconfigurations to deal with the supposed failures are likely to lead to more harm to HNs goal of providing a forum for gratifying intellectual curiosity than benefit.

I always appreciate your comments, and the ones I've seen in this thread have been an interesting take on the question. Just one point though: there's no radical reconfiguration here. Undoubtedly it would be if we were going to make it permanent, but when we said "for one week" we really meant for one week. IMO HN's community system has orders of magnitude more hysteresis than would be radically affected by a one-week change, though I guess I could be wrong about that.

Speaking of reconfiguration, why not buff the controversy penalty instead of outright banning political discussion?

Couldn't you also enable an enhanced slow mode on threads that seem political in nature? Maybe something like the "hate tax" system proposed here[1].

I feel as though political topics tend to generate a knee-jerk response in people, especially when they are in an...shall we say, altered state of mind. The more controversial a topic is, the slower the pace of discussion should be IMHO. Exponentially so.

[1] https://zedshaw.com/archive/ragel-state-charts/

> Undoubtedly it would be if we were going to make it permanent, but when we said "for one week" we really meant for one week.

If you had no intent to push this for longer, why even try it in the first place? What if I, and everyone else in this thread, is wrong and this turns out to be a magnificent idea and makes the site a better for everyone.

Now since this is so amazing, why not make it perminent?

The cynical in me is also asking, who gets to judge if this is a success or a failure? The community? The vocal portion of the community? The YC staff? You?

I trust none of those groups with as important of a disition as this nor do I want a precident set on any social media platform I use that a specific topic can be completely banned from discussion.

How do you think this is going to affect you and how you comment on HN?

Searching[0] comments for user:gravypod and stem word fragments like divers, sexi, raci, or discr return 0 hits. Searching for other hot button[1] words like abortion, jew, islam, muslim, gun, SJW, leftist, clinton, hillary, trump, right, women, Israel, iraq, vote etc etc return 0[2] hits.

What political discussions are you having on HN that you won't still be able to have? Can you link to a comment you've made that you think you won't be able to make during this experiment?

[0] It's possible that I'm using the Algolia search wrong, but I can return other comments by gravypod.

[1] I'm not saying these are always bad comments! But if I'm looking for the political comments that dang is talking about these searches should return them.

[2] Some hits, but nothing relevant, for vote and right.

Speaking against bad ideas isn't something I do only for my own benifit and I surely hope others feel this way.

By the way, I use firearm to avoid negative connotation with gun.

> why even try it in the first place?

For the reasons I gave: (1) taking a one-week breather from the kind of stories that erupt into flamewars seemed like a good way to remind us all of the values of this site (intellectual curiosity and civil discussion), and (2) we hoped we'd learn some things. As indeed we have.

> the kind of stories that erupt into flamewars

Should we also ban discussion on Javascript frameworks? How about we ban all discussion on the founder of Soylent? Those threads tend to lay on the side of ideological bullying.

> seemed like a good way to remind us all of the values of this site (intellectual curiosity and civil discussion)

No sufficiently intelligent group would avoid the biological imperatives that set in motion the basis for political events or discussion.

> we hoped we'd learn some things. As indeed we have

Comeing from a company as YC this is very scary. I'm glad that it has become evident that this, at least currently, won't fly with a large portion of the community. In the future I see the "innocently" minded as being the playthings of you and your friends at YC.

> Empirically it hasn't worked out very well on HN

I disagree completely with this. This is I'd say the one place online where people will actually try to provide a rebuttle to your statements. This is the perfect platform for debate on political subjects, adhominems are not taken lightly here and everyone seems able to keep a reasoned mind on what's being said.

>To me, your comment completely ignores the paragraphs written by dang in the submission, both the content, and the fact that it's temporary

dang's comments and posts are, as usual to me, completely indefensable and naive. To think that a site filled with well rounded people should the off limits to discussing politics? That's insane.

And on another note: it being temporary is not the issue. The issue is the idea behind the action. If we had "Temporary Slavery Week", or "Temporary Nazi/KKK Week", "Temporary Japanese Internment Week", or even "Temporary Ignore Reality Week" I would ABSOLUTLY not support these. So why should I, or anyone for that matter, support an idea or experiment devoid of any valid rationalization that would explain it's existance.

The only reasons I see to avoid political discussions are 1) You feel your community is too stupid to carry out this discussion, 2) You are afraid your ideas will be attacked and you won't be able to self-examin them, 3) You're too lazy to moderate your site, so to make it easier you're going to stop a hole class of discussion (that in my opinion is the most important form of discussion in a governed society) just to cut a bit of work off your plate.

All of these are positions I cannot agree with and SURELY I hope no one would expect a little bit of a vacancy of thought on topics of limited application. These are the times when thought is most critical. Wether it comes from banning politics for a week to court rulings who's only base to stand on is it's blatent "for the children" mentality.

> What do you think of the intent?

It's either intense laziness, malice, or ignorance (on a meta note, I intend for the "intense" modifier to apply to all these of these). None of these are good in my book.

> Do you disagree?

It seems like most people think that just because it's temporary it means it's ok. That's insanse. I absolutly do not agree.

> Have you seen or participated in any of the recent (past two or three months) of political threads on HN?

I regularly participate in political discussions about property rights, firearms laws, and in general scientific statistics that will provide political sway. I love these discussions as they often have to most complex and well rooted arguments from all sides of the spectrums.

> Do you have showdead on so you can see what's being posted and flagged?

I consider those who don't have this enabled to be burrying their heads in the sand. I've also got a custom CSS sheet on that removes the downvote-fade.

> Do you think it's okay?

What's ok? Do I think being coddled by admins saying "it's ok, I'll make the bad bad wrong-thinkers go away"? Not at all.

Do I think it's ok that people post their own opinions and others judge them? Of course. That's how discussion works.

> If you don't agree with the intent or think there is an issue, that would put your comment in one context. If you agree it's an issue and disagree with the political detox week, then that's another.

I haven't seen a problem but I do feel that there is likely one although this is all conjecture on my part. Find me a sample size of 30 comments that have been demonstrably downvoted because of opinion then I'll agree with you that it is an issue. Otherwise it is just speculation without data which is useless.

I ofcourse also have an issue with a detox week. That can just be called "Horse Blinders Week".

> I've also got a custom CSS sheet on that removes the downvote-fade.

Could you share it?

(btw, favorited, thanks!)

A classic HN moment: 'dang tells me I'm right, and I'm downvoted to -3 :)

> the alternative is impossible

Interesting phrasing.

(guessing here)

The downvotes are not because of the word "project", or anything in the two first sentences. Its because you called people "as siding with the bigots" because they disagree.

There is also some extrapolation that result in insults. Are anti-religion people bigots? Are Egalitarianism bigots because they don't agree with new feminism? Is the illegal vs legal-immigration discussions bigotry?

Thanks for the feedback. You're probably right that the downvotes aren't related to the first two sentences. Pro-diversity stuff routinely gets downvoted here, especially when it uses the f-word.

Still, if you read more closely, I didn't call people bigoted because they disagree. I called the people who are "anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti-trans (etc)" bigots. That seems like the right word to me.

> people who are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti-trans (etc.) - and for people who are Muslim, immigrant, women, trans and non-binary people (etc)

Those are beliefs vs identity, a particularly tricky subject. The problem is when, I for example, don't see it that way; I see many of those "identities" to be beliefs also, beliefs about self.

As an example, to a Creationist, arguments about evolution are about identity - there are few boundaries to which subjects people involve their own self-worth/identity. A similar argument arises wrt trans people and the various proposed categories that have arisen - simply saying "this is who we are" is not enough, since exactly that is what is debated.

That said, I suspect you mean "you can't welcome both women, and people who hold anti-woman beliefs". But the labeling of any belief is itself a belief. Some of those idea you call "anti-women" can both be considered not anti-woman and be held by women e.g. not all feminist believe sexual content to be harmful to women, or the idea to be productive.

Thanks for the reply. I agree that identity intersects with beliefs -- and more generally worldview, including epistemology, ontology, etc. And yes, there are certainly some areas where there are debates about whether particular behavior is or isn't anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, or anti-trans. As you say, these things are tricky.

Still, the points I was making ''aren't'' tricky.

- For the dimensions that I listed (and implied with the "etc"), in today's environment, HN is kidding themselves by thinking they can welcome "both sides"

- the feedback they're getting is from people (including me) who see YC and 'dang personally as aligning themselves with the antis by blocking political discussion

> That said, I suspect you mean "you can't welcome both women, and people who hold anti-woman beliefs".

No, I meant very specifically that in today's context HN - and by extension YC - can't simultaneously be welcoming to anti-feminists - and welcoming to women and allies.

by 'anti' you mean "anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, or anti-trans"? How does the political ban align with this?

> can't simultaneously be welcoming to anti-feminists - and welcoming to women and allies.

ally is a feminist term, but why can't women be anti-feminist? Are you describing this to be the case, or prescribing it?

I'm describing, not prescribing (and I'm specifically talking about HN and YC, not making general claims).

Yes, women can be anti-feminist. As you said, these are tricky issues.

If you haven't yet understood why many people see the political ban as aligning with this, then either you haven't tried very hard or your belief system is preventing you from understanding. There's plenty of information here and in other discussions, so give it another try.

> haven't tried very hard or your belief system is preventing you from understanding

why won't you say explicitly? Is there some nuance that cannot be stated?

It's not nuanced at all, it's quite clear. And I was very explicit about why I don't see it as a good use of my time or energy to try to explain it to you.

If this is something you really want to understand (whether or not you agree), invest the effort (which may also mean finding a way to get beyond any limits your belief system is leading to).

If you do that, you don't need any further explanation from me.

If you don't do that, nothing I say will help you understand.

And can you not see that:

> I don't see it as a good use of my time or energy to try to explain it to you

Is pretty arrogant, you have such high esteem for your perspective you don't think it could be wrong, in fact I'm biased for not understanding it;

You're suggesting, instead, that I must have to go on some mysterious journey-of-self, as if you were a wise zen master furnishing me with enlightenment; rather than supporting your own, somewhat basic, claim that "the ban supports the antis"...

It's interesting to see how you interpret my words. Thanks for the discussion.

> Thanks for the discussion.

Maybe it's my biases, but that seems pretty passive-aggressive.

Earlier:

> Thanks for the reply.

Also passive-aggressive?

Probably not, at that point it wasn't clear that the statement was unlikely to be true.

If you stood up in the middle of a geology lecture and tried to start an argument about Roe v. Wade, you'd rightfully be thrown out of the room. We're all affected by politics, but that doesn't mean that political discussion is necessary, useful or welcome in every context.

This is Hacker News. It's not the front page of Reddit, it's a niche site with a clear remit. I'm absolutely fine with any general political discussion being permanently flagged as off topic. If people want to discuss something like internet censorship or science funding, I think this may be an appropriate venue. Discussions about the technology of politics like econometrics, polling error or voting machine design may also be relevant. Beyond that, the internet has no shortage of places to discuss politics; many of them have a vastly higher calibre of political discourse than HN.

> many [other places on the internet] have a vastly higher calibre of political discourse than HN.

Can you (or anyone) point us to these? Not being sarcastic, but also somewhat skeptical - I've never encountered another public forum of HN's overall quality.

I think the metaphor about the geology lecture is misleading - HN isn't a lecture hall, it's an exhibition hall, and if the only criteria for something being an exhibit is a capacity to intellectually stimulate, then I don't see why political discussion should be precluded.

> If you stood up in the middle of a geology lecture and tried to start an argument about Roe v. Wade

This is a false premise. I've spent my week at a large scientific conference.

We have continually had panels re: our role and responsibility as scientists in the current political environment. Talks on hard technical issues have often included comments alluding to these roles and responsibilities.

Technologists are so deeply involved in the way that modern society perceives the world outside their immediate community that it's absurd to believe they can be apolitical.

Technologists need to discuss their roles and responsibilities as well.

So no -- you would not be thrown out of a room for bringing up politics in a Geology lecture.

HN isn't a Geology lecture at all. It's more like a quad at an engineering school. We're here because we're curious, we like to build things, we want to help create a better world. We cannot do that while insulating ourselves from the reality of our world's most powerful organizations and their leaders.

> If you stood up in the middle of a geology lecture and tried to start an argument about Roe v. Wade, you'd rightfully be thrown out of the room.

How about a meta-discussion concerning tactics for countering young-Earth creationism claims?

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 politics do interact with science, as one can conduct scientific experiments on government decisions, or politics can attack scientific community positions (e.g. climate change).

The way this sounds is that you are more concerned about politics as in people who take party positions and may feel excluded as a group when the majority of the community takes a different position. This is a slightly different issue i.e. party politics, and I think it is fine/a good thing, but it is also important to distinguish the two. This should essentially be under the same umbrella as personal attacks, as they are essentially the same thing.

> head in the sand

There are a ton of other sites where you can follow and debate politics all you want.

I'm starting to stick my nose into local politics here in Bend, Oregon, but there's no reason I need to talk about it on HN. I'm ok with compartmentalizing things: HN for tech/startups/'interesting things', and other sites for other things. I love bike racing, too, and feel that it's the best sport in the world, but I see no need to introduce bike racing articles here.

>There are a ton of other sites where you can follow and debate politics all you want.

But where do you draw the line of what is 'politics' and what is 'cool nerdy tech stuff'?

Is a breakdown of 538's method of poll aggregation too politically charged, even if there's a perfectly good overlap of math and statistics?

If Trump makes an out-of-left-field statement about repatriating corporate money, are we prohibited from talking about how it will affect Apple?

A blanket ban of 'political threads and topics' seem harsh, even if just for a week. I personally haven't found the political content on this site to be out of bounds, considering the monumental political upheavals we've been witnessing over the past year.

Politics is about who to blame and hacking is about solving problems. (Blaming is the opposite of solving problems.)

Interesting world view, and not one that I share.

Politics is about how resources are allocated in society and can often be a very effective solution to problems.

Politics is even more about how society wants resources to be allocated than it is about how they are allocated. That makes it an important and all-pervasive topic

That reductionist view of politics is part of the problem. Politics is the process of making decisions applying to all members of each group. It's essential and a part of what makes us human.

In modern vernacular it seems that that sense might be better expressed as "policy", rather than "politics".

Politics is the process to decide upon the policy.

Consider that the machinery to make group decisions and allocate resources already exists (laws, institutions, government, etc). It is imperfect and can be improved. But what is relevant here is that groups of people wish to alter the machinery in certain fixed (uncreative) ways. The unconscious motive is that of preserving their own identities.

An extreme case would be a Dr Evil figure who will not examine his own heart and needs the world to burn just so he can pretend to himself that he's a good person. So he makes the world burn. At every stage convinced of his own righteousness.

This explains why 'war is the continuation of politics by other means'. What passes for peace is trench warfare where the only progress is sideways. Improving the machinery may be desirable but in practice politics is dominated by preventing inevitable perturbations from escalating into open hatred and violence.

(More parochially one can tell when politics is influencing the discussion because there is always blaming going on.)

I think dang and the other moderators are capable of making pretty good judgement calls.

It's often pretty obvious from the ensuing conversation what kind of post it is: are people discussing the politics, or the technical thing that's kind of related?

It's a lot like that classical definition of pornography. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. If a topic gets a lot of downvotes this week, it means it crossed the line for a lot of people. Simple :)

> I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

See, that right there is a political statement in and of itself.

It's a definition that's ripe to be abused. It means topics can be censored and discussion silenced, not for breaking any specific rule, but by possessing too much of some subjective quality.

You'll just have to trust the moderators then. They're good people. Maybe they'll screw up a bit, but it's not the end of the world. Too much politics, OTOH, could easily lead to this site going down the drain.

yeah, and in that case about pornography, censorship was shot down.

> but there's no reason I need to talk about it on HN.

If you start a business, politics impact you. If you are an employee, politics impact you. If you invest in businesses, politics impact you in a huge way.

Uber and AirBnB are no longer just startups, they are very politically active corporations. But they both started, if not from here, then from other communities just like this one.

Politics is way more important than most of what we discuss here. Think about topics like gay marriage: being able to marry who you want is a much bigger deal for most people than whether Node.js is better than Erlang (Erlang is way better!).

That's another reason why it should be banned, because it will crowd out other topics by dint of being more important to more people - which is also a feedback loop, as more people get drawn in for the politics.

> 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 for one week we can focus on a positive future and its soaring aspirations. Go Dang!

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?

It's in HN's DNA to have a single community. The path you're talking about leads to subreddits, which would make for a siloed kind of site, i.e. one that is broken into silos rather than being in the same world. This is an important point, because it touches on the what-HN-is-and-isn't thing.

HN is a community for the the intellectually curious, who come here for a wide range of interests (some of which have political aspects, of course--there's no getting away from that). But there's a different kind of users, ideologically committed ones, who use HN primarily for political battle. That's not something that sits well with the purpose of this site, as I tried to explain above.

Those users really want a different kind of site than HN, and need to find another, or maybe start a new one. Plenty of new sites have spawned from HN; that's partly a function of our not trying to be all things. HN has always been in the lucky position of not needing to grow for growth's sake, so we're happy when people who want a different kind of community find it, or create it.

Can you carve out an exception for economic / startup relevant legislation please? As a UK based startup, I would really value HN support navigating Brexit and VATMOSS changes.

If one comes up this week, sure. Otherwise I doubt you need to worry.

(It's interesting how the "this is just for a week" thing hasn't seemed to enter the conversation.)

Of course, News doesn't stop rolling in, and people love their hacker news :) I know I'm personally guilty of being really sensitive and reactive to anything that looks like censorship right now.

I think one of the reasons the time limit hasn't come up much in discussion is that it's hard to envision the data/information/knowledge that we might have in a week that we don't have today. I don't mean to imply one way or the other whether this experiment will have meaningful results, just that it's hard for me to picture myself, in a week, reviewing the situation and saying "wow, now I know X, Y, Z." I mean I'm not sure what those X, Y, and Z might be.

On the other hand, the idea of an interminable ban on political discussion has many obviously salient implications, emotions, and such. A sort of half-baked analogy is that it's like lighting a tiny, contained trashcan fire in the middle of a nuclear reactor--it's not really a big deal but it's easy to see how it could trigger high-magnitude reactions from onlookers.

I see what you mean, but we've already learned a lot just today.

That's a creative analogy though.

> It's interesting how the "this is just for a week" thing hasn't seemed to enter the conversation.

Because the YC/HN culture is to experiment to inform future direction. "just for a week" probably means "just for a week, so that we can see if it negatively or positively influences the quality of discussion... and, if the effect is positive, we may implement a similar policy for the long term"

Thus, "just for a week" doesn't appear to have much relevance since the experiment is (presumably) part of a longer term plan to curb hostile commentary.

You've explained that very well.

The long-term plan is to protect the values of this site (intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation), or at least, it's our intention to find such a plan. But there's no longer term plan to ban politics. I understand why people would react with that concern, of course, but it really is just an experiment for a week.

> there's no longer term plan to ban politics

That was definitely not clear to me from the post (although it is reassuring).

I did mean my original post to be a bit more reassuring about that than it came out as. But maybe that was for the best, because the reaction it provoked has been instructive.

Also, I've gotten in trouble using that word "experiment" before. It turns out to mean weirdly, wildly different things to different people. But I'm attached to it.

(It's interesting how the "this is just for a week" thing hasn't seemed to enter the conversation.)

I think that's just because people are natural cynics, and as such default to the assumption that a temporary state of emergency will be permanent.

> 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.

At least allow us to opt out of the artificial safe space.

Technology and politics go hand in hand, unless we'd like to head back into the dark ages.

EDIT: I'm not hear to offend or persuade with politics talk. I'm here to provide or obtain new perspectives and understanding. If I want an echo chamber that reinforces my perspectives and beliefs, I can head back to Facebook.

Technology and politics go hand in hand

This just reads like a cop-out to me, in the same way that large media orgs have been parroting the "it's impossible to be truly unbiased" line as if it were an excuse to throw up their hands and stop trying altogether.

Not that I'm saying you're being disingenuous here, mind, it just reads like defeatism. "All tech is politics so it's pointless to try delineating them". This mentality gets worse and worse as you go down the main thread...

Not all, or even most tech talk is political related. I'm just looking down the front page right now.. a new Golang web framework, Elixir and Ruby IPC, OpenAI, new SSDs..

Those topics aren't even tangentially political in nature.

> Not all, or even most tech talk is political related. I'm just looking dowen the front page right now.. a new Golang web framework, Elixir and Ruby IPC, OpenAI, new SSDs..

And these are the articles that matter the least to me. I come here to discuss applied technology, not theory. How can technology improve quality of life? How are we going to deal with automation replacing the need for jobs? How are startups and their culture effecting both their employees and society as a whole (I'm looking at you AirBnB and Uber).

To each their own. I don't believe it's a cop out, but that's my opinion. You can have your threads and I can have mine without any interference. That's my problem. There's no need to censor politics threads if you simply skip them because you have no interest.

OpenAI is one of the tools that might be used to replace whole swaths of people from their jobs. How can it not be political?

>How can it not be political?

Short answer: Because oftentimes a thread about a technology is about its concrete operational characteristics and applications, not it's social effects.

When you start dragging those into the topic, there's shockingly little depth to probe. AI will automate people out of jobs eventually - okay, and? You've moved the thread off topic. I came to read about how OpenAI works, not what the left, right, center, and upside-down think about the larger concept of AI, rather than the specific implementation called out in the thread title.

Here's the thread I was talking about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103742

A cursory reading suggests that somehow, that particular rabbit hole was avoided by everyone there. This kind of goes into what dang was saying, broaching the topic you just did in that thread would have just been unwelcome noise.

Do we really to relitigate "what about the jobs?" any time an AI or deep learning framework comes up? Is that really an interesting discussion to have in every thread?

One can refuse to approach the inherent political nature of the topic, but not deny it exists, which was what I was responding to.

That said, sure, not every thread should re-hash the same conversation, but that's neither exclusive to politics (see the discussions in every thread about JS frameworks) nor is it the problem being called out by the moderator.

If they go "hand in hand", they are inextricable in all ways that matter. Yet somehow, here is a very healthy discussion thread where it isn't brought up, at all, ever. That tells me that they are not as inextricable as people seem to think.

Again. Do we really to relitigate "what about the jobs?" any time an AI or deep learning framework comes up? What if there are sites that are not Hacker News that are better for that kind of discussion?

Sorry, I edit my post, so the answer to the relitigation problem is above :)

As for other sites, no, absolutely not. Politics is unavoidable. You can enforce a silent acceptance of the status quo, but that's in itself a strong political (reactionary) position.

And yet the other thread somehow managed to discuss the technical nature of OpenAI without touching any of this other stuff, absent any enforcement (the political cooling-off period was started after that thread was submitted), or obvious attempts to not touch it.

These two views are mutually exclusive. Either technology discussion can be separated from politics discussion (and given the other thread, we have evidence that it can), or it can not.

You're telling me that I can't discuss a topic without touching this other topic, and yet here that is happening right in front of us.

No, I'm saying that lack of discussion is a political position, and a community-wide ban, or even refusal to discuss it is yet another - in particular, one that silences everyone who is not okay with the social impact of the topic.

What if I am not interested, at a meta level, in discussion on the social impact of the topic? (Note: Please appreciate the distinction between topic X in general, and discussion of topic X on board Y)

There are times and places to have political discussions - the fact that I do not engage with my mom on political topics over Thanksgiving turkey does not mean I am not interested in politics, it means I am not interested in politics in that particular context.

Mostly because I know that the discussion will end in anger, hurt feelings, and not a single changed mind. It has happened enough on this board that people, myself included, start getting very flag-happy when they get a whiff of partisanship in the air.

I especially do not appreciate the implication that not wanting to have the discussion "here" is a political statement of anything other than wanting to avoid a headache. I must point out that insisting that X be talked about when someone has expressed disinterest in the topic is hard to interpret in any way other than hostile disregard.

It's the Internet. Opting out is the easiest thing in the world to do by going to a different web site.

Then just say "we're censoring these posts because reasons kthxbye".

EDIT: Which HN is totally within its right to do.

I'm just not understanding your complaint, then. Dang gave the reasons why they're doing this at the top of the post.

> 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.

The vision of where we want to be is the central political debate of all time, to which all other political discussions are peripheral appendages. So, no, banning political discussion doesn't let us focus on that, it prohibits even considering it.

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?

> 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

The thing is that we all have very different visions on the hill of where we want to be, and that friction is what's playing out in these threads.

I actually haven't seen very many political stories on here. I've personally avoided most of the political crap too, so maybe I just didn't click on a lot of it (and therefore selectively un-memoryed it).

I don't feel this need to be an explicit policy. I mean it gets into the entire "what is politics debate."

Hackernews is about hacking (software, hardware, life), and I still see tons of that on here -- well that and Amazon spam, but that's mostly due to their recent conference/product announcements and will probably die down soon.

The problem I see is that everything is politics, because politics is the air we breathe as a society. It's asking the question of how we live in community.

I think what dang is after getting of is tribalism, where people show group membership with displays of insults, meme-dropping, etc.

Different things, but if any group can separate tribalism from politics, through thoughtful community-making, I'd say HN can.

This is getting closer to the answer.

http://www.goreading.net/Red%20Mars/24.html

Very useful distinction. One mark of tribalism is a set of knee-jerk responses and stock vocabulary. If people could at least check in their tribal phrases, we would have better conversations. For example: 'racists', 'crybullies', 'deplorables' and so forth. Although left-libertarian, I don't hold with all this 'no platforming' nonsense, for instance. Leave the words behind, and find less loaded terms in an attempt at recovering public discourse

Here's the thing though, what is a reasonable alternative to 'SJW' - those that employ deplorable, emotive tactics in progressive topics, with the implication of self-aggrandizement. Maybe we need a solid vocab with established definitions.

Yeah, I'm with you. Are there political threads here that I have been missing?

Many. They get flagged off the front page, but that doesn't mean they aren't still very active. Here's a recent example that helped convince me we needed to do this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13095475

You'll need 'showdead' set to 'yes' in your profile if you want to see all the comments in it.

I think this thread is actually a great example, though maybe not in the way you intend it.

When I look at the tone of the downvoted/flagged "dissident" comments (not a value judgment, just an objective description of perspectives that are not generally well-tolerated in intelligent, cultured, Western circles today), and compare it to the tone of the "normative" comments, I see very little difference.

They are both slightly snarky, hostile, exasperated and dismissive. If I was moderating on tone to oppose conflict, I would not like seeing either kind of comment. But I would not consider this tone level worthy of the Giant Banhammer.

But the banhammer is applied very asymmetrically -- both by voters/flaggers, and by moderators. Or so it appears to me.

The result is a context in which "dissidents" feel like they're essentially sitting in the back row next to the teacher's pet. Any time Jamal has a spat with Andrew, the teacher's response is the same: "Jamal, why did you hit Andrew!" "Jamal, stop being mean to Andrew!" But Andrew can say pretty much anything to Jamal.

And both sides argue vociferously that the teacher is unfair. Jamal feels it's unfair that the rules seem to be different for him and Andrew. Andrew feels it's unfair that Jamal, that annoying idiot, is even allowed to be in the same class as him.

It's relatively easy to adopt "both sides complain about the teacher" as the definition of "the teacher is just enforcing fairness and good behavior." But in fact, whatever the teacher draws the line, one side will always want it farther to the left, and the other side will always want it farther to the right.

To be fair, if I had a solution to this problem, I would offer one.

Well, okay: one solution, if there's no practical way around the asymmetry, would be to make it explicit in the guidelines. You could say: when expressing unpopular views, make a quadruple-strong effort to ensure your perspective is presented clearly, sincerely, civilly and humbly.

What really rankles Jamal isn't even that he's a second-class citizen. He could deal with that. What rankles him is that everyone keeps denying that he's a second-class citizen, while in practice treating him as one.

> When I look at the tone of the downvoted/flagged "dissident" comments (not a value judgment, just an objective description of perspectives that are not generally well-tolerated in intelligent, cultured, Western circles today), and compare it to the tone of the "normative" comments, I see very little difference.... But the banhammer is applied very asymmetrically -- both by voters/flaggers, and by moderators. Or so it appears to me.

Very much agreed. I find dang having a problem with political accounts amusing, given it was dang's moderation that inspired me to make mine.

> the banhammer is applied very asymmetrically

I think you missed the part where this was mostly one guy, evading their ban by re-registering new accounts. So it looks like dang was very ban-happy to just one of the sides, but it was one guy.

Apart from the multiple bans of one guy, I see comments from both sides of the argument getting called out about their tone.

These strike me as clearly separate concerns. The magnitude of downvoting and flagging is also quite different.

And of course, we'd never know if the people who aren't banned would stoop to the foul crime of ban evasion. As they used to say, the law in its majesty commands that neither the rich man nor the poor sleep under the bridge.

Moreover, I was describing a general pattern of discourse, not just this one thread. If you don't feel you see this pattern, there's not much to argue about...

And of course, it is not just the mods. Downvoting polite discourse for content is something some people feel a social responsibility to do. We certainly can't avoid the consequences of the secular growth in this popular sense of responsibility.

Oh wow. Hadn't not seen ANYTHING like that. A couple of threads right after the election, but that thread is just totally inappropriate for HN imo.

Thanks for the policy, although I honestly just thought this had always been the policy anyway.

I second this observation. I've been frequenting HN probably 10x as much lately BECAUSE of the fact that I've felt that there has only been a slight uptick in political stories - vs. other outlets.

That is all anecdotal of course.

edit: grammar.

I got off Reddit completely about 2 months ago for the same reason. I have no problem with the density of political discussion on this site...probably because it's not Reddit. Sure some people get emotional...but I'm not seeing the baseless accusations and snark always seen on Reddit.

I think we should entertain this experiment of Dang's for the time being.

They seem to be flagged on this site. You rarely see them stay up for long.

I find it disturbing too. Right now one of the top stories on HN is about Amazon Go and the top comment is about whether the destruction of jobs it could cause is socially acceptable.

I don't know whether that is politics or not but I can't imagine discussing Amazon Go as a technology without having that discussion. In fact when you look at HN very little is about particular technologies. Most of our discussion is around the implications.

I can't agree enough. I'm all for flagging uncivilized discussions, but preemptively censoring things that might turn into uncivilized discussions seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater - we need to be able to talk about difficult things.

We need to be able to talk about them, but it doesn't need to be here. There's value in places where you know you can come to discuss certain categories of things and avoid others. That is what's going on here.

It seems that because social implications of technology can lead to political discussion, it's out of bounds.

I'm not arguing for a free for all, I am arguing that the proposed ban on politics for a week is too broad a brush, because it catches several relevant conversations, and the serious offsenses are already against the rules.

I've been attending a lot of AI/Data Science conferences lately, and it's incredible to me how this is not a major part of any conversation about AI and automation.

A talk I recently attended by a data scientist from Amazon had him gloating about how many jobs he could eliminate.

Ironically, the only speaker who brought it up as a major social problem we'll have to tackle is someone from Uber. His solution was less than satisfactory, but at least he recognized the issue.

I don't want to pretend we live in a world of algorithms without consequence.

As a "data scientist" myself and more importantly as a human being, I witness the same behaviour almost every day and it baffles me.

Yes, what we do can have consequences. We need to think about that!

I have friends working for weapons manufacturers. They don't gloat about building stuff that can blow children up!!! Why the hell should we be absolved from any moral consequences for our acts?

I am not equating elimating jobs and kill children, but I would prefer if our industry abstained from any thought on the consequences of its trades.

I once had to choose between working for a weapons manufacturers for a very nice salary. I chose not to work for them. But I thoroughly thought about it and I don't blame my friends for making a different choice. I politically object to that choice, but it does not mean I am some sort of white knight...and it does not mean that sometimes in the future, if presented with another opportunity, I wouldn't make a different choice...

It's the gun-manufacturer/shooter dissociation.

Anecdotally, I had a neighbor who programmed the guidance systems for bombs, and the only reason I remember him is because immediately after introducing himself as such, he followed up with, "But I'm not the one who's dropping them. By making them smarter I can save lives".

I think that no matter how technically intelligent a field's operators are, they are still subject to the same dissociations as everyone else.

You are absolutely right and I can totally relate to both your experience and your neighbor's.

I don't program guidance systems for bombs, but I program marketing tools which are, in essence, tricking consumers into buying stuff. I dissociate myself with that issue by considering that any commercial relationship is based on tricking the other party into buying more stuff, but I would totally understand if someone objected that my software is not morally acceptable to them (and I would politely suggest that they go bother someone else :p ).

Further down the line, we could end up discussing if living in a society based on capitalism is "right" or "wrong". I would totally understand if people considered that as "not an HN worthy submission", but I think that inside a thread on the moral, philosophical and social consequences of AI, it could come up as a subject...and be down-voted if need be, not flagged as off-topic.

I think we're still in the early phase of A.I. where things seem more theoretical and thus ethics is not included in the discussion. However, as we near the time when policies will have large scale implications for our society, those consequences will be measured out. This is why I do not think A.I. will be a revolution but rather a gradual process. Already, the automation of cars is subjected to government regulation.

True, that said, it's much less theoretical to the people doing it than the average blue collar worker whose lives they're disrupting.

That's why I think the industry has a moral and practical responsibility to push society to properly prepare for the results. Because we understand the implications better than anyone.

We have been working on AI in one form or another for 50 years or more, I think it ought to be time for a serious debate about this.

Lisp date from 1958 and some would argue that rule-based programming is AI. Eliza is also more than 5O years old.

The ethics of AI have been extensively discussed for a very long time.

In essence, the debate taking place around AI is a heir of the 19th debate on automated looms. Karel Čapek play, Robots, has been written in 1920 and it was already an ethical discussion of "autonomous machines"...

My first introduction to AI and its consequences and dilemna come from Isaac Asimov Foundation Cycle and that dates back to the 1950s.

AFAIK, the 3 Laws of Robotics invented by Asimov are actually used by philosophers & AI practitioners.

(I added and then removed references to the Golem, but...it could be argued as relevant to this discussion)

I am quite vehement in this discussion exactly because I am currently debating whethever or not I should release a new AI software I have designed. From a technical standpoint, I am quite proud of it, it is a nice piece of engineering. From a political standpoint, I feel that tool could be used for goals that I am not sure to agree with...

As technology inclined people, I consider it our duty to have that discussion.

We work on technologies that impact, in one way or another, other people's life.

As you correctly point out, the discussion of the social impacts of Amazon Go is currently open in another thread and I consider that a must.

Other example of the need of politics in here and in our heads when we design something is the case of Tristan Harris [0], as a former Google employee.

I am not saying I agree with Tristan Harris, or with one side or the other in the Amazon Go thread, but I consider HN as a place where civil political debate needs to take place, because we have a moral duty to have it.

We are, in a way, the 1% of "technologically aware people" (and probably among the world top 10% wealthiest...). We need to discuss these issues and we need to think before we act. I'm not trying to re-enact the 99% battle, but our privileges do come with a price and that price is thinking before we act...

I urge people on Amazon Go team to have that discussion. Do they consider working on that project socially acceptable for them or not, and why?

Do I consider, as a SaaS marketing provider, my job as socially acceptable, and why? That is something I, both as a citizen and a business owner, need to think about and openly discuss with my customers, shareholders and consumers/citizens if need be.

I will probably kick down an open door, but the etymology of politics is politika "affairs of the cities": aren't we all, as technology workers/operators/... all living in these cities?

[0]http://www.realclearlife.com/2016/10/27/former-google-produc...

With automation, robotics and AI the world does not need so many bio-robots anymore. Before we needed dumb people to do manual labor. Not anymore. Machines can do it. Most of people don't want to learn and change. What to do with the bio-mass that can only eat, shit and have fun?

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 or face the onslaught of downvotes if we express a dissenting opinion.

I'd rather see HN go politics-free forever. Political discussions do not enjoy the same level of objectivity that technical and business discussions do. Frankly, it may be impossible to expect objectivity within political discussion because our political feelings are so deeply-held and tied to our individual upbringings, culture, and locale.

Unless HN can figure out how to give fair treatment to minority opinions, it's best to exclude these discussions entirely.

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 people feel uncomfortable or might turn uncivil seems like we are missing a really important piece to the news we discuss here.

Minority opinions are never going to have "fair treatment" by the majority. I've been down voted several times for my opinions and I'll take it again just to be able to have the discussion here.

Perhaps the upvote/downvote could be removed from political stories and in its place, an "abuse" flag could be substituted?

Perhaps upvote/downvote could be replaced with ontopic/offtopic. Or goodpoint/badargument.

Eventually we'll wind up with Slashdot-style scoring.

Or remove comment voting altogether (a voting detox week experiment? :)). I'm a bit skeptic about how much comment voting improves the discussion quality... maybe it's completely useless, or maybe it harms more than it helps. A sort by responses may be enough if you are looking for interesting points.

Comment voting is good to filter out spam/off topic and then sadly it can be used to create an echo chamber where dissenting opinions of all sorts gets shut down.

Track up and down votes separately. To compute the effective score, square the number of up votes and then subtract the number of down votes.

Removing votes will transform this in something like the comment threads of youtube. The vote system is not perfect, but in technical discussions it usually is helpful to make the good comments float to the top.

YouTube already has comment voting. So does Reddit. Doesn't seem to be a trend in regulating comment quality. OTOH a decade ago I found the lack of comment voting on FARK to be refreshing.

The problem is defining good comments and having users actually follow that protocol.

To many, a comment that doesn't follow their personal logic or point of view is not a good comment. And you end up with echo chambers where only the comments that align with the majority of a community pop up, while the extremists (for lack of a better term) of a community are pushed to the bottom. Those extremists could easily be individuals sounding the alarm on something that's happening, such as skepticism for a story.

On Reddit and HN, I almost never downvote anyone because I think it's a terrible system that is too often abused and reduces the ability to have meaningful conversations about controversial topics.

As a personal rule I don't downvote grey comments unless they are very offensive or extremely wrong. And I usually upvote grey comments in spite I disagree with them, unless they are offensive or very wrong.

Sorting by responses just makes the controversial ones go to the top.

Or upvote/downvote could be replaced by two completely value-free congruent triangles, pointing in opposite directions.

There already is an abuse flag on every comment. I think there's a karma threshold of 30 before it shows up.

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.

Spot on. To quote one of my favorite songwriters, Todd Snider, "I didn't come down here to change anybody's mind about anything. I came down here to ease my own mind about everything."

Yes, I generally think that the conversations here stay on the relevant technical topic and treat political explanations as just more evidence into an investigation instead of the end-goal. I don't want a board focused on politics, I certainly don't find this kind of civil discussion in reddit.

I also don't think that the hacker spirit responds well to barriers of thought and discussion.

It's just an anecdote, but I know my views have been greatly affected in part by hacker news. I was once a staunch libertarian, but reading a lot about universal basic income and other approaches people have offered to income inequality and social issues, while talking about the technology trends first and foremost, have convinced me to broaden my beliefs.

There is something about having a stated goal outside of political points scoring that helps everyone see themselves as part of the same team. I've always felt hacker news is largely about understanding things related to technology - trends, weird bugs, how startups work, etc. With that as our main focus we can defer to each other and learn from each other. When the main force is to debate the other side there is no room for concessions or finding common ground.

What I want in a community, is for people of all different views and backgrounds to think about a topic with the end goal of solving some problem. Hacker news isn't perfect there but it's close.

The basic income discussions are pretty pointless though. There is just a group of people who think we should have it and another who think it's a pointless thought experiment because it the economy is about an order of magnitude short of the output required for the numbers being proposed.

That's not pointless, those could be really good points! Maybe UBI is something we have to throw out for now, maybe it can be implemented in a way to get around those challenges.

But it's the same points over and over again. Every single time something about minimum wage or job automation shows up someone brings out the UBI horse to beat some more.

Those might just be today's lucky 10,000[0] who haven't seen the discussion up to that point, and a small price to pay for being able to discuss it at all.

I know I just learned something from this meta discussion, about the argument that the economy can't support UBI based on GDP numbers, and I'm eager to go read more. Most arguments I have seen say it won't work because of moral hazards and I haven't seen an argument that says it flat out can't be done, because there are so many different approaches and different ways it could play out.

[0]https://xkcd.com/1053/

It is possible, if not probable, that each of those times you thought someone was beating the horse some more, at least one other person reading was unaware of and interested in the discussion. It may seem to you like all the stuff discussed here is common knowledge, but most of it really isn't, and this community grows all the time.

Maybe a way to flag topics to hide similar ones from yourself would be helpful, but applying this more generally to the entire community doesn't sit well with me.

Agree. If topics and comments are going to be hidden because they're "political", there should be a way to view and upvote these if you want to "opt-in".

There is. Set "showdead" to "yes" in your profile. You can "vouch" for comments made by banned users.

That's what "hide" does for a submission, though you have to do that on per-submission basis.

If a conversation does nothing more than make someone think about their stance more than they have before, it's been wildly successful.

That's all you can ever really achieve with any online discussion about a topic that has no "right" answer.

> 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.

Meaningless small talk or an endless discussion about the latest and greatest JS framework. It's like watching TV while the house is burning down.

If you really think it is that bad, then maybe you shouldn't be here, but somewhere relevant to what you feel is important. This is a tech board.

I am very curious: are the impacts of technology and whether-we-should,-not-whether-we-can not appropriate discussions for a "tech board"? Because those are fundamentally political topics.

But they're not matters of red-versus-blue United States partisan politics, which is (as far as I can tell) what's being banned here.

I dunno. Facebook shapes epistemic closures for its users. The question of whether transgendered folks have the right to exist is one that gets a "no" in some of those groups.

I don't think that should be political, I don't think it should be red-versus-blue. But it is. Should that be banned?

It is an incredibly vague rule that probably just means "If this offends someone we want to do business with, we'll nuke it"

But it is no secret that US conservatives are a lot more pro-fossil fuels and US liberals are less anti-renewables. In that context, who is in power determines who is approving budgets and who is giving subsidiaries and incentives.

To remove the ability to acknowledge the political aspect of things would lead to

"I wish we spent more on wind power." being responded to with "Well, we would if <COMMENT REMOVED DUE TO RULE VIOLATION>"

That's not my understanding, though I can see how you might come to that conclusion, given recent events and the lack of detail in the submission. 'dang clarifies in this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614

That kind of distortion of the importance of politics is the reason why many of us will appreciate taking a break from it here.

The reality is that the "latest and greatest JS framework" and how I can use it to make my clients happy is likely to have far greater impact on my family's situation than arguing endlessly about national and international politics. Arguing about politics online is about as useful to your personal situation as arguing about football team uniforms or Dancing with the Stars celebrity scores.

Anything tech related on /r/politics gets deleted. So, yes, in this comparison it is more effective.

Because they're political comments on tech issues. They have given me new insights on numerous occasions. And I love all counterarguments, especially when they go against beliefs I hold dearly.

And it's not just about finding out that I'm completely wrong. Sometimes it's just a new light, and sometimes it's just the reminder that really smart people too believe some things that I didn't think were possible for a "reasonable smart person" to believe (if you don't think you need constant reminding of this, ... well ... haha ;-) )

I agree with your sentiments. But this is only for one week right? Let's suck it up and see how it goes?

I trust that the admins want the best for the community.

And I don't envy the admin's job!

I know I could just be very sensitive to anything that smells like censorship right now, and that could be coloring my visceral reaction here.

Still, I afraid of this becoming a thing. One week is a while and while I don't think the mods would ever dream of intentionally doing this, it could happen during important events.

It is really hard for me to imagine what metrics after the fact would justify this. How do you measure the effect of self censorship has on influencing people's beliefs here?

I am worried that this will generate some numbers that seem to justify the practice and it becomes a regular practice around politically charged events.

> I agree with your sentiments. But this is only for one week right? Let's suck it up and see how it goes?

Yes, absolutely! I said this in another comment, I'm curious to see how this experiment goes but I'm also glad it's just for one week :)

For what it's worth I find discussions centered on the same topic here to be much more civil, informative, and engaging than on most platforms (including /r/politics).

To be blunt, /r/politics is full of groupthink and represses alternative opinions. HN is much better in that regard. Also, the fact that everyone here is united by a smaller set of common interests makes the discussion more relevant to me. I enjoy reading political discussions here and often find them though provoking. I don't on Reddit.

HN has exposed me to varied and critical political discourse that I would not find elsewhere in my life, and has on the whole been overly positive.

Places like /r/politics are often devoid of any real debate or critical argument, and are stressful and tiring to involve oneself in.

I do welcome a week without politics on HN, though I would not like to see it permanently in place such an exercise lets us fall back on what makes us happy.

Did you think talking about SOPA on HN makes sense? Talking about the legality/morality of NSA snooping?

What about Uber's woker policies? Facebook censorship/curation? Data privacy?

Hiring and firing policies in tech companies?

How to manage rogue IoT devices? ICANN domain policy?

This is just a sample of topics that feel pretty "Hacker News". They're all political (or at least have strong political angles), and they're all pretty popular topics of conversation here.

Now I've felt the moderation here has worked in good faith, and is likely trying to reduce flamewars here. But I'm a bit worried that the things that get marked political will mainly be around discrimination issues.

And considering the amount of SV "leadership"(scare quotes but you get the idea) on Hacker News, this is a _very_ effective forum to talk about the difficulties of certain people to get work, get funding. Talking about it here can jumpstart more ways of tackling these issues, and thinking about what the community as a whole wants to do

The old rule of not having discussions that reintroduce flame wars which arguments have been stated, restated, and re-restated is a rather useful criteria.

Unless grounded and significant structured, discussion about discrimination aren't going to bring any new ways of addressing things. What it commonly do is just expanding the battlefield and pushing people further apart. Even between those that agree on the goal, people can and do still disagree on how to reach it. I have described it in the past as comparing left and right politics, with both side wanting prosperity and liberty. Each side has fundamental different views and values for how that will be accomplished, so the discussion circles around the disagreement rather than the agreements.

Is it really easier to ban the topic than to ban the flame war? Flame wars are already forbidden.

I think that's a fair question. That said, I think it's important to balance where the effort is expended. Cleaning up flame wars requires work on the part of the moderator at very little cost to those fanning the flames.

To perhaps abuse an analogy, when a neighborhood gets well known for arson, people will move away. At some point it may make sense to forbid certain types of structures in the neighborhood to see if it reduces the instances of arson. (okay, that's admittedly pretty tortured :)

It's a trade off, and while I'd like the world to be perfect and people talk about everything calmly and with respect, empirically this is very much not the case for certain topics. A limited test (detox week) makes sense to me. And it might not work, which is why it's a test.

I think maybe a trial week of "agreement awareness" would be a fun exercise.

On these sorts of discussions, talking about what is actionable, what we can do to reach common goals.

Though there are pretty fundamental disagreements among people on these as well, and I'm not sure where the discussion can go (for example University quotas).

But trying to get HN to be more positive overall would be encouraging. I believe this was done for Show HN stuff, having it done overall seems like an interesting next step.

Even just a msg above the reply box like "Hey, you're talking to another human being! And probably agree on a lot of things"

Doesn't this mean that to veto any topic, all you need to do is stir it up?

> Each side has fundamental different views and values for how that will be accomplished

counter this though: the left (at least at the moment) feel pretty comfortable flinging labels around? Is this just a vocal minority calling Trump/supporters a fascist(s)?

Detox week may be a good time to focus on non-political positions and views to problems like mass-job displacement. Are there solutions to these problems that don't fit neatly into a political ideology? Are there solutions that don't require government policy?

If the non-political solution antibody makes itself a permanent resident of the HN community as a result of detox week, I know I'd be pleased.

There's no non-political solution to a social problem. It's a contradiction in terms. "Non-political" just means "aligned with the political status quo".

The idea that major social ills can be solved with no governmental intervention is itself very political.

There seem to be multiple meanings to "political"; one in a broad sense (things pertaining to social governance) and a specific ideological axis along which certain general topics become polarized. The former is fine, the latter is damaging (at least in high concentrations or some such).

The appearance of a single overwhelmingly-dominant ideological axis is an artifact certain electoral systems produce in the societies that host them. The fewer axes of variation the electoral system supports, the fewer end up significant in discourse in the society.

The "broad" definition is the one in most dictionaries; the narrow one you suggest seems to be the overlap of partisan tribalism with a society with a single overwhelming axis for the reason described above.

In any case, simple utterances of tribalism are already clearly off-topic on HN, whether they are centered on political ideology or not, so clearly an experiment of the type here must be targeting something broader (though apparently also narrower than the dictionary definition of poltiics.)

> In any case, simple utterances of tribalism are already clearly off-topic on HN, whether they are centered on political ideology or not, so clearly an experiment of the type here must be targeting something broader (though apparently also narrower than the dictionary definition of poltiics.)

I think the better explanation is that a lot of tribalism is slipping through the filter, so the filter is becoming more strict for a time.

'"Non-political" just means "aligned with the political status quo"'

Is this a quote with a source? It's genius.

Not directly, but it's inspired by this excerpt of Red Mars: https://gist.github.com/andreparames/37844c65d918c89cce7d76c...

(Unsurprisingly, Arkady is my favorite character.)

Since mass job displacement is a problem that gravely affects our society, the answer is a political one - even if the answer is "no government policy" The view that government shouldn't intervene in itself is a political view. There's no escape from political views unless you want to discuss mere theoretical algorithms that have no applications at all in real life.

How on earth can one talk about labour displacement without involving political solutions? You could say "purely economic" or "purely technical" solutions only need apply - but by doing so you are taking an ideological stance, which is political.

Yeah, it honestly seems like HN should split into two forums effectively.

Tech (No politics, etc.) / Not Tech.

The trying to force it all into a single view seems to be creating some friction.

The distinction isn't tech/notech. That's the most important thing to understand about this whole site!

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I do think the purely political forum that a minority of users here seem to want, would best be served by a different site.

The very niche "I want to argue politics, but only with other hackers" site!

Which only applies to part of HN readers; from reading the comments here, many hackers appear to dislike the political arguments which take places on HN.

> I do think the purely political forum that a minority of users here seem to want, would best be served by a different site.

Privacy issues, opinions on hiring practices, etc. are all topics that have heavy polarized sides with little to bridge the divide and would likely benefit from a shift in separating those topics from the solidly tech related ones.

Although, to be honest, I'm more concerned with the fact you are oblivious to this than I am about the fact you call change ignorance. I guess it does not really matter, I'll be off HN for a long while.

Except, as tons of people have already pointed out, there is no way to talk about tech without talking about politics. Is research about how the Google search algorithm or Facebook's news feed shapes users' opinions tech or not-tech? Is a story about Uber researching autonomous cars with the intention of eliminating drivers in its own industry and industries like trucking tech or not-tech?

I think for HN becoming less political do not mean avoiding topics with a social impact, it means avoiding the display of personal political preferences in discussions.

For example "why did Trump win" is a political topic that can be discussed on HN the HN way: share confirmed figures and stats, links to informed opinions, bundle these together to form an explanation and test its predictiveness on other similar cases. All of that can happen without anyone ever stating their own personal (dis)taste for Trump. (Edited for typos)

I agree with you and the first question that came to my mind was: what constitutes political discussion? I believe that, like it or not, the cat is out of the bag and Hacking/technology in general is very much entwined with politics. Thus I'm interested in the "hacker" point of view on these topics...

I wouldn't think that a conversation about job displacing tech would be against the rules/political. I'd think that it would get political, in the sense that detox week is trying to avoid, if discussion turns to the president-elect or "partisan politics"

> I'd rather see HN go politics-free forever.

I think that being able to discuss political issues such as regulations that impact startups is important, and will certainly resume after the political detox week is over.

FWIW, I enjoy well articulated dissenting opinions, as well as experiences brought from sources external to a community's shared experience. It's instructive as well as frequently enlightening. That said, I do also appreciate tribal familiarity and the "relaxed state" that comes from friends who think alike.

How is this any different than people getting downvoted for questioning the ability of Tesla to execute on an insane timeline or any of the other random things go against the HN hivemind?

I'd suggest not caring about downvotes.

If your feel your perspective gets marginalized, shouldn't you want to be able to convince others of what you believe to be true? Removing all political conversation will perpetuate the status quo.

This assumes that humans put rational argument above tribalism; social psychology tells us this is not the case ("morality binds and morality blinds"). Excessive political discourse seems more likely to strengthen bonds within political groups relative to the bonds we have with those from rival political groups. Taking time to realize how much we have in common seems prudent.

> Unless HN can figure out how to give fair treatment to minority opinions, it's best to exclude these discussions entirely.

Given that cultural and political values and assertions are diverse within relatively small communities, never mind a global audience, I'd suggest this would be very difficult to pull off.

For a moment, consider speaking about a topic that was settled decades or centuries ago in your community, but is still a controversial topic elsewhere. What topic are you thinking of? What other communit(y/ies) were you thinking of? What issues and communities do you think other people would offer? I bet there would be a lot of different perspectives on these questions, which is the reason political discussion should be limited.

I am sorry to hear you feel this way. as someone who has independent views, I have no idea what the views of the average HN reader are but I'll try to be more mindful of this in the future.

> 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 or face the onslaught of downvotes if we express a dissenting opinion.

Are there any online communities where their political opinions match more with yours? Why don't you hang out there instead? I realize that's reinforcing an echo chamber, but it sounds like you're looking for more of an echo chamber, right?

> even though I have made my points in an informed and respectful way

Maybe an example of a time you made a point in an informed and respectful way only to be downvoted and derided would help clarify?

> Unless HN can figure out how to give fair treatment to minority opinions, it's best to exclude these discussions entirely.

I strongly disagree. I don't know what "fair treatment" means, but if enough people on the site feel a topic is worth talking about, we should talk about it. Specific incidences of abuse should be flagged, but again, it's hard for me to say one way or another without examples showing what you mean.

As to the overall question of whether politics should be allowed on HN, HN started as "Startup News". It's always been a site about entrepreneurship, mostly in the tech industry. Entrepreurship is intimately linked to politics in obvious and non-obvious ways. Politics has to do with taxes, healthcare, immigration, legality of certain types of research, market size and access, shifting demographic trends, financing sources, and much more.

Edit: I removed a final sentence because it's moot and doesn't add to my actual argument.

> To take this blanket approach of "No talking about politics!" is...

For one week.

> "Forbidden topics" because some people's feelings are getting hurt?

It's about a lot more than that, as I tried to explain in the text above. There are two different kinds of site—intellectually curious and politically combative—and we cannot be both of them.

> For one week.

Then I hope it's just for a week. I know HN weights certain topics down already. I think there's a good argument for some of that, but I don't see an argument for more of it.

> There are two different kinds of site—intellectually curious and politically combative—and we literally cannot be both of them.

FWIW, as a user, I have not noticed an uptick in politically combative discussion on HN, although I have noticed the uptick in political posts. If your target demographic is basically founders/hackers/entrepreneurs/whatever, having a place to find relatively sane discussions about politics is a good thing. HN is pretty much that, I can't think of a place that's better.

I do think having lots of strong opinions in one place is a good thing and helps those opinions evolve towards something better. Echo chambers result in the information equivalent of inbreeding.

But that's my point, I very much don't want HN to become an echo chamber by, for example, banning political posts for more than 1 week (which is a weird experiment, but fine).

> There are two different kinds of site—intellectually curious and politically combative—and we cannot be both of them.

I disagree. You cannot support intellectual curiosity without healthy, relatively unrestrained (in subject matter) debate.

Now, simply tribal displays that aren't debate where people engage with each other, are a problem and need to be corralled effectively to avoid becoming.the dominant form of activity.

But not only is "politically combative" not opposed to "intellectually curious" in a site, the former is essentially a necessitate to accept if you are going to have the latter.

From your profile, you've been around the block more than a few times here on HN. Your disagreement here has me puzzled, as it seems to be disagreement for its own sake rather than understanding the intent of the detox week and attempting to refine the language explaining it. I understand dang's "politically combative" to describe what you state as "tribal displays that aren't debate". Or am I completely misreading your comment? If that's the case, would you elaborate? Also, how would you handle behavior such as that displayed in

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13095475

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13041886

What actually constructive on balance came out of these discussions? How can we improve the signal-to-noise ratio/reduce the tribal displays? This is a topic I'm genuinely interested in, so your take on it given your experience here on HN is of particular interest to me. I think it's not putting words in dang's mouth to say reducing the tribal displays (as opposed to stifle intellectual curiosity) is exactly what detox week is attempting to accomplish.

> Your disagreement here has me puzzled, as it seems to be disagreement for its own sake rather than understanding the intent of the detox week and attempting to refine the language explaining it.

I'd love to understand the intent of detox week. I don't (either in terms of the intended scope of the policy or the motivation and intended goal state.)

And the issue I'm taking with elements of the description of either by dang (in a couple places in this thread) are both because I disagree with them phrased, and hope that pointing that out will lead to responses that better elucidate the whole picture.

But I suspect that the whole thing is trying to deal with a change in the political climate outside HN by modifying what is already a near-optimal policy in HN to one that is far worse.

Cool. So, from your point of view, the threads I linked to are okay as is?

No, from my point of view the exist guidance and policy on what is off-topic is the right way to address threads like that, and blanket bans on "politics", however defined, offer no additional benefit but do eliminate valuable conversation.

They through out more baby, but do nothing additional about the bathwater we want to deal with.

Now you've really got me confused. Other than the comment by dang at the top of one of the them that mentions the detox week, I provided them as examples of non-constructive threads on HN that are operating under the existing guidance and policies, which I understand you to say are near-optimal (and I agree are pretty good, and would like to see more enforcement of). With that in mind, are those threads okay, and to be expected as part of the current guidelines and enforcement (by mods and community)?

Both of them are general interest political news threads covered by the mainstream media (one was at the front of every mainstream report in every medium), and are already, as such, at the top of the list of things which are presumptively off-topic and suspect. While they are perhaps predictably problem threads, the politics detox doesn't actually change anything about them from the preexisting policy. It just cracks down on the kind of specific-interst-to-hackers political issue threads that were arguably on topic under the normal rules, unlike these. Which makes no sense.

they are perhaps predictably problem threads

Thank you! That felt like pulling teeth, and I didn't think was controversial at all. I'm not trying to score points.

[Edit to add: For me, this is part of finding common ground, and "they are perhaps predictably problem threads" is perfectly in keeping with your earlier statement about the existing guidelines and policies being "near optimal". No human social system is going to be perfect.]

I think that detox week (note: week, not permanent forever) is an attempt to reduce the problems these threads represent. You obviously disagree that detox week will do anything to improve this, which is fine. I think it's understandable that the mods would want to reduce these types of threads if they can.

You've also said that the current guidelines are near-optimal. Does that mean that any attempt to improve on the guidelines shouldn't be attempted? That's a legitimate position to hold. I think it's also understandable for the mods to try to improve the behavior on the site to more closely cleave to "civil and substantive". Hard to fault them for trying.

Thanks again for your contributing to this thread. I appreciate it.

It's not about feelings getting hurt. Some of us just don't get any value out of the political discussion on HN. HN always had guidelines and moderation, this isn't exactly new.

>Are there any online communities where their political opinions match more with yours? Why don't you hang out there instead? I realize that's reinforcing an echo chamber, but it sounds like you're looking for more of an echo chamber, right?

Trying to diversify discourse here sounds like the opposite of looking for an echo chamber, and the 'tech community' is in dire need of it, at least as far as politics is concerned

I don't want to hang out in an echo chamber. I enjoy the diversity of opinions that I find among my coworkers and social media friends. However, neither my workplace nor Facebook feature the "downvote". Being downvoted for expressing an unpopular opinion here is the equivalent of being shoved out of a circle of friends. It doesn't feel good and I don't come here to feel like crap. I don't think I'm all that different than most HN readers when I say that I come here to escape from work or home life for a few minutes and learn about things. Exclusion because you're different has no place on a forum like this.

Being downvoted for expressing an unpopular opinion here is the equivalent of being shoved out of a circle of friends.

You should learn to take feedback less personally.

It doesn't feel good and I don't come here to feel like crap.

If someone uses emotionally charged language to denigrate you, then I think you have a valid complaint. But the interpretation you assign to a downvote is just that - your interpretation.

Sometimes I get downvotes, it feels like crap, and I realize my comment deserved them.

At other times... well, as I once posted, "One thing I've learned around HN is that sometimes you have to wear your downvotes with pride."

It can be mildly entertaining to watch a post fluctuate from 1 to -4 to +5 and back and forth multiple times over the course of a couple hours.

They are just internet points, after all.

But... but...

Those who die with the most Internet Points win, don't they?

You've got over 2k karma. You can afford to lose some.

Even then, I scrolled back through your comments. The last time you got grayed out was over a month ago (although I'll agree that that thread was a little like what you describe, and I was really unhappy to see 'idlewords and 'tptacek say what they did, not least of all because of how much I respect them... I was in that thread too, and I'll remind you that the moderators closed it because it just turned into an all-out flamewar).

I agree with your political opinion, for what it's worth. But I don't agree that you should feel anything based on downvotes. Sometimes people will disagree with you. Sometimes they won't.

But never, ever let a little number next to your name control your life. Don't let it become who you are. Make your comments when you feel they're appropriate, and don't take it too harshly when you get knocked down.

I want you to know that you're welcome on HN.

> You've got over 2k karma. You can afford to lose some.

Consider how that would sound to someone who's "karma-poor," i.e. anyone new to HN.

> But I don't agree that you should feel anything based on downvotes....never, ever let a little number next to your name control your life. Don't let it become who you are.

Yes, Eleanor Roosevelt was right, of course. However, the fact remains that people are people, and people are social animals, and, despite being virtual, these are social interactions with real consequences.

One of the problems with downvotes is that they have no cost for the voter, but they inflict a social penalty upon the receiver. Their being anonymous-yet-public is part of that problem.

Imagine being in an office environment that had a corkboard on the wall divided into columns, one for each employee. Anyone can anonymously post a card, and anyone can read posted cards. Downvotes are the equivalent of someone posting a card saying, "You're wrong and stupid and you should feel bad for saying that thing you said earlier today at lunch." The person making the accusation incurs no social cost, expends no social capital, but the person about whom the comment is made suffers a social penalty, an anonymous-yet-public shaming, without even an opportunity to defend himself or face his accuser.

Would anyone deny that such an environment would have extremely negative consequences for social interactions in the group? Imagine walking up to the board and seeing a number of cards equivalent to over half the group in your column, all of them shaming you for something that happened earlier. Who in the group hates you now? When you interact with someone, and they seem nice, are they putting on an act? Are they talking about you behind your back? Are they one of the ones who posted those cards?

Yet here on HN, people think this kind of interaction is acceptable, even good. It makes no sense.

Another serious problem with downvoting (or, at least, the way downvoting is implemented here) is that it discourages discussion. Every time someone takes the time to write a thoughtful comment, and it gets downvoted into invisibility, that person is discouraged from doing so in the future, because it would effectively be a waste of his time. Why should he bother, when it only takes a few people to click a button and make his words vanish. And in this way, the whole community is worse off.

For example, see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13118453 I made a relevant comment with a good point supported by a clear example. Then someone responds with a bunch of strawmen that have no relevance to what I said and my comment starts getting downvotes. His comment wasn't even relevant, which is exactly the kind of comment that should be downvoted--but does his get downvoted? No, of course not--he gets approbation, and I get shamed. A few more downvotes and my comment won't even be seen by anyone who might have something interesting to say about it, which disenfranchises me of the opportunity to have a discussion at all.

I wanted to have an interesting discussion on the topic, but a handful of people have the power to deny me that opportunity, while remaining anonymous and refusing to even engage in the discussion themselves. It's just plain cowardly. So why should I bother? It's a waste of my time. HN becomes a read-only medium to me. But of course, to them, that's a good thing, because I'm an outsider, and they don't want to hear from me.

> I want you to know that you're welcome on HN.

That's nice of you to say, but it's not the case according to the people who downvoted him, because such downvoting is directly discouraging further such participation, i.e. saying, "Don't do that again," which is exactly not welcoming.

> [...] despite being virtual, these are social interactions with real consequences.

... absolutely not. You can sign out of Hacker News whenever you please, and none of the people here follow you into your real life. Posting here has very few "real consequences". You might get a boost on traffic to your blog or find someone interesting to start a company with. But I won't pity you for getting downvoted. No one picks up a resume and says "that's interesting, but how much karma do you have on HN?"

> [downvotes] have no cost for the voter

Well, perhaps, but they're not free either. Voting down is a privilege, one that many people on this site have earned.

Also, many users will vote up a comment that's been grayed out if they feel that it shouldn't have been. If your comment is good, it will get rescued by passersby.

> Downvotes are the equivalent of someone posting a card saying, "You're wrong and stupid and you should feel bad for saying that thing you said earlier today at lunch."

Downvotes are the equivalent of someone posting "I don't think your opinion is valid/interesting."

And I scrolled back through your comments, like I did with the other guy. And I actually agree with many of your comments being downvoted. Being in the middle of a flamewar three weeks ago (and not stopping until 'dang prodded you), being factually wrong, and mentioning downvotes over and over again (seriously, I had to scroll back three pages of comments to not find "downvote" in the page somewhere): none of these things are interesting.

Especially amusing was the comment you posted before this. You posted four paragraphs that would have been better expressed with a downvote. There is a reason that they exist, and a reason that they have no cost per use. You can signal your opinion in a way that doesn't require you to post many paragraphs. (Humorously enough, I can't vote your post down, as it's in reply to me. I guess I have to post many paragraphs then.)

Sometimes you will randomly see a single downvote here and there on a comment that you thought might be legitimate. Don't overthink it. It's just a little internet number. Move on.

> For example, see here:

You post a relevant comment with a good point, supported by a clear example. Someone points out one way that your argument's premise might be flawed (although that person doesn't refute the argument you made).

Your mistake was posting an overlong recap of your previous comment, in a cynical and near-polemic tone, instead of pointing out the flaws in that person's argument. You get "shamed" for not furthering the discussion.

> [...] he gets approbation, and I get shamed.

The intent isn't to shame you. It's to filter communications that most people don't find useful.

People can still see your comments. They're not gone. If you feel disenfranchised, that's on you; you're still welcome to continue posting, just as long as you don't continue posting in the way that you did.

> a handful of people have the power to deny me that opportunity

Deny you what opportunity? You're still able to continue posting. In your linked thread, for example, you were the one who didn't respond.

> because I'm an outsider, and they don't want to hear from me.

It's not you, it's your comments. You're implicitly reading this as an ad hominem argument. I want you too to know that you're welcome on HN. You even seem like a reasonable person. But in my opinion, some of your comments are overlong tirades that generally don't lead to productive discussion (and I hope I don't offend you by saying so).

You're being told, both passively (through downvotes) and directly (by moderators), that certain kinds of comments are not acceptable here. Hopefully you'll see the pattern. I know it took me some time to find the correct commenting pattern too. Don't feel bad about it.

With that setup, we can finally tackle the first point you presented:

>> You've got over 2k karma. You can afford to lose some.

> Consider how that would sound to someone who's "karma-poor," i.e. anyone new to HN.

I wouldn't tell that to someone new to HN. If they haven't earned much karma, they probably haven't learned the ropes yet. In which case, they should learn to walk (make directly on-topic and guaranteed constructive comments) before they run (make comments that deviate slightly but still lead to respectful and interesting conversation).

Don't take HN too seriously. It's just a website that people talk to each other on.

PS:

> [...] all of them shaming you for something that happened earlier.

"Shaming" you for something that isn't related to your comment?

> Who in the group hates you now? When you interact with someone, and they seem nice, are they putting on an act? Are they talking about you behind your back? Are they one of the ones who posted those cards?

I'm trying to read this charitably and failing. Are you intentionally accusing people of voting your comments down because of the user they're attached to, or am I simply failing to read your comment in the way you intended?

I thought there were rules established: upvote if a post is thought provoking and or informative; downvote if it's factually incorrect or doesn't contribute to the conversation.

The forums on the internet should not be solely to affirm your opinions, but also to challenge them and allow growth as an individual.

The problem isn't with politics -- it's with the people misusing the voting system.

> downvote if it's factually incorrect

I would be surprised if this had much of an impact. I've encountered a lot of people even on HN who truly seem to believe their ideology is somehow 'fact'. Those who are sufficiently self-aware in this regard are probably not abusing the downvote button to begin with.

The actual rule emerges from the code: upvote a post you want people to read, downvote a post you want made difficult to read.

> It often feels like there is one prevailing slant on this site

When people talk about "the average HN reader", or the "prevailing slant", I'm always curious what they mean.

For me, it's always felt more like a back-and-forth struggle between radical liberals and hardline libertarians. That's always been the general nature of pretty much every tech-oriented forum historically (e.g. HN, Reddit, Slashdot, Usenet, etc). When Mike Judge was once asked about the core insight behind his "Silicon Valley" TV show, he cited his belief that the tech ethos is a conflict between liberal and libertarian values.

As a pragmatist who just likes to read about tech, I find both sides annoying.

Still, technologically minded liberals/libertarians, for all their differences, are not the only viewpoints, and even if there's disagreement along that axis it can still lead to a bubble. I doubt you'd see many people on HN advocating for a fundamentally Christian America, for instance.

Yes, liberal-libertarian is only one axis and this axis is different to the Democrat-Republican one. Both liberals and libertarians are socially liberal, as you imply.

I'm also curious as to what the mean (or median) HN political viewpoint would be, and which is the majority/minority viewpoint.

Personally, I tend towards liberal politics. I interperent this statement as "Liberal politics dominates HN, and conservative politics is a minority that gets downvoted"

Even assuming that's accurate, I tend to find more conservative viewpoints on this forum, compared to other forums I browse, and I find those conservative viewpoints better argued, and more likely to affect my view.

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 for a week.

How is that unfair? It's actually quite fair. We all have opinions and we can upvote, downvote, and comment equally.

The parent to my comment complains about HN being unfair to his political viewpoint and has a history of posting somewhat sympathetically about Trump. He seemed to assume that sympathizing with Trump or conservatives is the only way one could disagree with mainstream HN political views. "Unfair" is his term, I was making a point.

Saying "you were downvoted" doesn't mean all of HN is unfair. I've been here a couple years and overall the topic of inclusion and diversity is handled very well. I dont mean "well" in that every progressive claim is unilaterally accepted, either. I mean that we take the subject seriously and most of us are champions of diversity and inclusion.

This may be the most laughably wrong statement I've seen in this entire thread, and that's saying something.

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?

There are myriad ways the status quo can be at odds with people's values and desires. Sometimes the status quo remains so because we can't decide on the proper remedy or disagree on the proper remedy. Just because something is status quo does not mean critique is inherently controversial.

I would suggest, if your critique proposes a particular remedy, you should expect people to question whether your proposed remedy is a good idea. If it does not propose a remedy, you should expect people to question whether your critique is even useful.

A critique of the status quo that doesn't generate controversy is probably irrelevant.

Some users will down vote comments not because they disagree but because from experience they know that any resulting discussion will be unproductive. Rehashing the same discussion again and again is actively destructive to the community as a whole. It decreases the signal-to-noise ratio, tacitly approves of the negative contributions, and increases the likelihood that those that contribute positively will leave, and the community as a whole will be all the worse for it.

I don't understand how your conclusion follows from the rest. The fact that your "uncontroversial critiques of the status quo" get down voted is evidence that we can't have unbiased and productive political discussions on HN.

This ban gives the status quo implicit support by stoping the discussion in its tracks. Our reality includes political discussion and I don't think we can cleanly make a divide between it and other things that spark interest in hackers.

That's why this is a good time to experiment with a ban. The USA is in a transition between two presidents of different parties and the UK has an unelected supremeo with two chaotically contradictory mandates.

The status quo is fuzzily defined at this moment so bias towards it is not as harmful as usual.

Something that all discussions could benefit from, especially politics, is a clear distinction between descriptive and normative comments. For example, describing a bias in the status quo should not be equated with endorsing that bias.

We should probably try to stay on the descriptive side as much as possible. Whenever making normative statements, we should probably make sure they are based on an unbiased collection of facts (and not ignoring inconvenient facts), with solid and clearly explained reasoning, and assumptions made explicit.

I think that it's important to support minority opinions, sure. Civil discourse needs to be civil.

That said, not wanting to talk about politics is a political act. It's basically saying, "let's let the status quo keep going for now", because most things involve politics on some level.

Can we get away from namecalling and toxic behavior? Sure. But having a politics free space isn't the way to do that.

I'd rather see HN go politics-free forever. Political discussions do not enjoy the same level of objectivity that technical and business discussions do.

I'd like to point out that this site is called "Hacker News", not "Technical and Business News". While there is no single "hacker political stance", there are ethical principles embraced by the community that can be applied usefully to policy questions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic#The_hacker_ethics

As many have pointed out, it's really the subjective content of this site (here in the comments) that has the most value.

In recent threads, I've made some factual observations, only to have people imagine a slant or motivation, then argue with that commenter of their imagination. I think HN is succumbing to the "Arguments as Soliders" antipattern:

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers

As someone whose views don't align with a good chunk of HN readers (or don't align, period), I've grown to love reading about differing ideas through the eyes of others computing/tech enthusiasts. There's common ground to start from and most importantly, even if it turns out to be a viewpoint that deeply goes against my values I can still respect this fellow human because of their tech expertise.

I have to admit, it really irked me at first when I came here. How can all these people that like the same things as me, have ideas that are so ... "wrong?!" (just kidding, honest :) ) But then I learned to listen and realize that these opinions will be here whether I engage them or not.

Of course, I see subthreads that aren't very "objective in the way I want them to be". But I don't share your experience with downvotes. I try to refrain from trying to convince the person I'm directly replying to if their view is directly opposed to mine, that never works any way. I just state my own personal position and how it reflects. Sure I get the occasional downvote but that's almost always when I've let myself be confrontational about it. Also, there's a big difference between providing a link to some facts that a person might not know, and a very opinionated link (that may also have facts and numbers) that is arguing your point.

So yeah, while I support the experiment (it'll be interesting to see), I really hope they don't extend this to forever, but just occasionally after particularly turbulent US elections.

Finally:

> fair treatment to minority opinions

Come on what does that even mean? I don't know what your opinions are. You don't know what mine are (you can read my comment history but good luck). I have no idea what "fair treatment to minority opinions" should even mean. My opinions are minority opinions too (I'll change them if you don't believe me), but I know this; People that complain their opinions aren't getting fair treatment are very rarely worth listening to, regardless of position. I prefer a better signal-to-butthurt ratio.

> Come on what does that even mean?

> People that complain their opinions aren't getting fair treatment are very rarely worth listening to, regardless of position. I prefer a better signal-to-butthurt ratio.

Downvoted comments are subject to being greyed out here, which is a stigma. Yes, it happens. The downvote in a political story has such a different meaning than downvotes in other stories. I feel like people use them as an agree/disagree vote in political threads, whereas they serve as an informed/uninformed vote normally.

So you're saying it's difficult for you as a white male (at least according to your linked social media) to deal with the issues that you encounter related to grayed out HN comments about the president-elect? The same president elect who goes on TV and and threatens to ban Muslims from entering the US based on their religion. But you are really worried about the grayed out HN comments and the stigma they give you in this community?

This is exactly why people are compelled to speak up politically in every space they can. You are not affected by the policies other people are afraid of and you feel slightly inconvenienced by talk of them and want talk swept under the rug. Whereas the other side says "we cannot sweep this under the rug because of how important it is to our well being."

> I feel like people use them as an agree/disagree vote in political threads, whereas they serve as an informed/uninformed vote normally.

That's the rub: political disagreements tend to go beyond facts and into the realm of values, at which point it's no longer a matter of informedness. This phase change in the debate can be hard to detect, as even the debaters might not realize they are no longer arguing from facts (since their deeply held values may 'feel like facts'), but IMO it's the reason political discussions tend to decay in quality at a certain point, because one side is no longer honoring the previous terms of the debate, knowingly or not.

For what it's worth, I think political debates on HN are worth having and can be very productive, because my subjective sense of the HN population is that a higher percentage of us are open to reevaluating our beliefs (and potentially our values) in the face of new information than the human population at large.

I think you're taking these downvotes way too personally.

Also, yes, in a strongly charged political thread, up and downvotes are used very differently (compared to the wide variety of ways people use up/down otherwise, definitely not just "un/informed", take a breath and a step back and you can see that). I've seen it, and it seemed mostly there was wild voting going on, and if it changes the meaning in any sense, only to make the votes less meaningful, so just don't worry about it.

I've personally seen maybe two of those threads, cause as a non-US citizen I don't have much of a beef in it. I think stuff like that is what prompted this detox-week.

But from what I saw, the up/downvotes really went both ways. I know for sure, because that's when I realized the voting was going wild, reasonable comments on both sides voted in to greyness.

BTW the recent discussions about the new Macbook being sufficiently "Pro" or not, followed pretty much the same pattern and I'd love to have a detox week for those as well.

edit: Hey. So, we were explicitly not talking about our personal political points of view, but just about dealing with opposing views and reactions there on. Now I see you're getting greyed out. While I'm getting mad upvotes (you guys). Can we maybe agree that it's maybe perhaps not the political points of view that make the difference here, but rather the earlier-mentioned S2B ratio?

I agree with you and I need to work on taking it less personally. But, can we agree that greying of posts is perhaps not the ideal way to treat downvoted posts?

I preferred when (way back when) it showed the actual vote totals (or up/down numbers, I don't quite remember). It also greyed posts btw. At some point they changed it, the justification was something about vote gaming/brigading and spam, which was reasonable but it wasn't a crucial fix to a very critical problem either (IMHO).

Most importantly, this change was made before dang became moderator, to try and fix certain ways the community worked, and nearly all of those ways have changed a lot because of the changes in moderation, so I wouldn't mind seeing that decision to be revisited. I doubt that'll happen though, it's just too safe and easy not to show vote numbers.

As for actual greying, I dislike the fact that it makes reading harder very much. If some people have downvoted it, doesn't mean I don't want to read it. For the same reason I have 'showdead' on in my profile settings (I really wonder how many people have this btw), also because (as I have explained in older comments of mine) I am very much against the concept of hellbanning as it is applied on HN. Again only last week I saw a few 'dead' accounts posting just reasonable (not super-informative or upvote-worthy, but just "fine") comments. Checking their post history I could see some "bad" comments that surely deserved all the downvotes they got, that probably triggered the hellban, but that doesn't excuse in any way to waste these people's time like that, writing reasonable comments, thinking they are participating in conversation, unknowing that the large majority of users won't even see their posts. There's no justification for that, if they need some kind of lasting sanction, have them be notified about it, maybe a posting timeout or something.

What would be better if comments with a certain number of downvotes would auto-collapse, like Reddit does. Even better, adjust the threshold per subthread so the total number of visible direct replies is between 10 and 15, or some number. I'd have locally scripted this myself a long time ago if the downvote-numbers were available.

However, you also seem to have a problem with the greying that it's signalling "unpopular opinion!" to other users, if I understand your remark about "stigma" correctly. Meaning that even if it didn't hamper legibility, if they used a different colour or perhaps a sad smiley in various states of desperation (I dunno), you'd still find a problem with that? Cause I'm not very concerned about that at all. IMO, the signal is the message, like say your posts in this thread, came off to me as somewhat whiny, regardless of the actual opinions in your post history that you were complaining about getting downvotes (which I still haven't looked at, btw, but I'm not sure I would want to), that kind of tone signals a lot stronger to me, downvotes or no, grey or no, opinion that I agree with or no. But maybe once you manage to take downvotes less personally, this particular side of the issue will become less of a concern for you as well.

>think you're taking these downvotes way too personally

Whether personal or no, submarining comments simply because people disagree with them has always struck me as an intellectually awful "feature". I mean, think about that. People are actively encouraged to effectively censor comments simply because they disagree. What else can that do but encourage a pernicious group-think?

In fact, we should be doing the opposite: if it's stimulating discussion we want, then people should be encouraged to upvote well-made points, even if they don't agree with them.

And, if there's a downvote at all, then it should be for poorly constructed arguments that don't contribute to the quality of the discussion.

I agree that on the face of it down voting for disagreement is frustrating, though I have a hard time squaring that with the understandable desire to up-vote for agreement. I think most people know when they're making a potentially contentious comment, and in that case (just like in real life), should take far more effort in crafting their comment to be incredibly fair and charitable (while acknowledging disagreement) to those who might disagree. For one it makes it much more likely for those who don't agree to read the comment charitably themselves, it's more likely to lead to constructive discussion and have the benefit of being more immune to down votes purely on disagreement.

Edit: Looks like the two of us have discussed this before :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12974834

And both times I've appreciated the civil discussion. Thanks for that!

You remind me an Aristotle quote: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. :-)

That's a great quote! Thanks for sharing! That and the oft-attributed-to-Voltaire “I wholly disapprove of what you say—and will defend to the death your right to say it.”, though I temper the latter with a wholesome peppering of civility.

> People that complain their opinions aren't getting fair treatment are very rarely worth listening to

I feel this opinion falls into that category

That's a bit of a confusing, almost paradoxical-seeming statement :) I don't believe I complained my opinions are getting fair treatment. In fact, they almost always seem to get fair treatment. Even when they're ignored or downvoted, really, if the majority of HN-users are anything, it's an uncanny valley of faceless reasonableness :p

Unless you mean something different, maybe the line could have used some qualifiers. So it's not the opinions themselves that aren't worth listening to, to be clear. It's just that given two people of the same position, the one that's not complaining their opinions aren't getting fair treatment is usually one that can argue their position a lot more clearly and therefore is just generally more worth listening to. Although that's the less-accurate positive version of that preference of mine. In my personal experience, the negative version is almost always on point.

I meant the category of "not worth listening to"

> given two people of the same position, the one that's not complaining their opinions aren't getting fair treatment is usually one that can argue their position a lot more clearly and therefore is just generally more worth listening to

You didn't say "more" or "less" worth listening to, you said "not"

A trouble I have with HN is the casual assumption that a subject actually has an objective truth that can be debated. Often we just don't agree on the basics of what is actually important in a philosophical sense. So every fact is just a proxy for a particular world view. It is better to question the underlying assumptions than the facts themselves. We don't need to do this with technology or buisness because we already share the same sort of world view.

You see this kind of problem on debates about climate change. Once people learn about environment and ecology they tend to assume that humans have an unavoidable impact on the planet. Climate change "deniers" simply have a different intuition. All the science in the world is not going to change that. Which is why it is political, and not objective.

Really the entire point of politics is to debate things that lack definitive truth. Of course that is probably true of anything that is discussed on a forum to a lesser or greater extent. Otherwise the answer would already be on Wikipedia.

I also often see this when someone argues that a certain action by a company isn't ethical--which has no objective truth, but that makes the debate only more fruitful, IMO--and someone else then replies that this company has every (legal) right to act this way, which has more of an objective truth by most standards, but isn't very interesting at all if you don't live in the same jurisdiction, nor has it much relevance to whether the action was "right" (in the ethical sense) or not.

But then, I guess, that person has every right to conflate moral and legal rights ... so sue me? :)

Yes, I have lost count of the rants against "natural products". People develop these buying habits in response to an inabilty to hold complete information about a product. So you have to have shortcuts based on your world view. For every organic lover there is someone slurping Soylant.

You make some interesting points about non-objective discussions on HN. I think your reasoning could justify banning other topics too, so I'm wondering how you would decide that discussions aren't objective enough.

For example, you could use your justification for banning any discussion about HN's rules since that would also be subjective and have minority viewpoints unfairly downvoted. People are often passionate about any rules changes as we can see by the upvotes on this submission. Do you think discussion about this rules change should be banned too?

I like the idea, but I don't see the rule to stand if something of importance happens this week.

Personally, I think that is quite a self-centered view. You don't want political discussions because you are in the minority? That's quite a myopic perspective to take.

That's probably the biggest disadvantage of the simple upvote/downvote moderation system. This is one area where I miss Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderatiom system (though I don't miss the continually degrading quality of the discussions).

It's a bit like the distinction between true democracy and a democratic republic. True democracy is mob rule. Democratic republics are slightly better at maintaining some sanity and objectivity.

I completely sympathize. The hate is real -- I myself often have to take a personal "detox break" from HN simply in order to feel human again.

It would be nice to be able to consider HN a welcoming, warm community but, on the other hand, I don't want it to be a fake sense of community -- I'm glad when people vilify me for my beliefs so that I can mark and avoid those people.

I feel your pain, brother.

>I often feel marginalized by unfair downvoting in political discussion

This is insane. Why are people worried about internet points. I'm guessing you are an adult right? and you don't want to express your points of views because someone might click the little arrow?

Why? Please, honestly, explain this to me.

I could care less about the "internet points". Look at my karma--I don't need them. My objection is to the greying-out/hiding of comments that are voted down. This is how a majority can effectively silence a minority viewpoint here on HN. It's easy to say "get a thicker skin" when it's not you that's being squelched.

Here are a few reasons someone might care:

1. Internet Points are a social signal.

2. Some HN features are restricted to users that have more than a certain number of Internet Points.

3. If you are expressing yourself in a comment with the aim of communicating, having the comment downvoted enough to grey it out (making it harder to read) will frustrate you.

Rational, polite, constructive, civil, objective discourse is possible on any topic. It just gets a lot harder.

> 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.

I've had a hard time finding a good place to have substantive political discussion outside HN. Anyone have suggestions?

The best I've found is reddit.com/r/neutralpolitics. It's strictly moderated, with minimum comment lengths and required source links when making factual claims.

I too have not found a good place to have any type of political discussion. Even on HN it's better but still almost impossible especially if you have any type of opinion or have done anything in the past that doesn't align with what the majority of opinions are on this site.

Politics seem to work like religion in the brain. I'm not sure it's possible to have a good discussion.

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.

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.

So, where would a story about the code in voting machines sit? Anathema?

I agree that HN does not need walls of bickering partisan flames, but outlawing discussions of politics and ethics is not the way to go in my mind.

I don't see any reason a story about voting machines couldn't be strictly technical. What politics would you even want to discuss?

Well, for instance, one might want to discuss whether it would be right that an unaudited private entity would have access to voter data - or is that on the taboo side of the line?

That entirely depends on the requirement priority for the user experience being based on agnostic fact, not opinion.

But as we know, some parties prefer more stringer voter identification at the expense of supression, and vice versa.

You can have a discussion about how to implement voter ID without deciding whether it's a good idea overall, or whether it violates the VRA.

In fact, most voting machines don't check ID at all; they leave that to the humans. (If they did check ID, the machines could secretly match votes to names.)

Whether or not they have it now is irrelevant (it's an example) - any proposed technology would inevitably see this requirement, and others, being identified based on opinion, not fact.

Voter ID is not necessarily a bad thing and doesn't necessarily lead to suppression you just also need balances like making it mandatory for citizens over 18 to be enrolled to vote - that's what we do in Australia and it solves a whole bunch of issues.

You don't get problems with large swaths of demographic groups being disenfranchised/turned away from the polls, because everyone is on the electoral roll.

And oh look, this is how a technical discussion about voting machines will drift in to non-technical political discussion. Viva la detox week I say.

Unless some actual, new technical evidence turns up - and there doesn't seem to be much sign of it so far - voting machines are a pure political football right now. There just isn't that much new discussion to be had outside of speculation and partisan bickering. It was certainly interesting watching them go from unhackable to insecure in the mainstream political discourse despite the actual evidence not changing, though.

I think this is where good judgement comes into play. If there's an argument about Trump or Clinton, clearly it's off topic. If there's an argument about how a technology will be impacted by some element of the current political landscape, that seems reasonable.

Others have stated this elsewhere in the thread, but it's often impossible to avoid politics altogether. I'm completely with you about posts that are purely political in nature.

I guess I just interpreted "politics" to mean left vs. right bickering, not the nuanced ethics of self-driving cars or whatever. The left vs. right never-ending debates are what I want to avoid.

If an article clearly has a pro-left/right spin, I don't want to read it.

This leaves you in a place where it's very easy to fall prey to a really crafty spin and turn that into the norm against which you compare everything else. And suddenly you're seeing things that, hey, that's not spin. And bit by bit, you drift one way or another.

The world is political and everybody's trying to sell you something. You can't opt out of it. Sorry.

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.

Meh. This is for a week.

Also, taking it to an absurd, think of /r/aww. Would you support having 50% of the stories on there be links to CNN/Fox/MSNBC? There's a line somewhere, and there are multiple ways to address it: have a separate section or site for political news (call it PHN), have specific days or a quota of political news, to try to keep on topic, allow it, but moderate it so it has something to do with the Hacker part of Hacker News, etc. Why not experiment. Even the most HN-addicted of us can probably live without this one part of HN for a week.

> think of /r/aww. Would you support having 50% of the stories on there be links to CNN/Fox/MSNBC? There's a line somewhere

Yet, that's the necessary result whenever declawing becomes a topic - /r/aww then becomes not just political, but even very tribal.

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.

Seconded. Even the old M$ vs moms basement linux arguments would be better.

I think it is reasonable to avoid political subjects that are off topic. Which is difficult, I know, because on-topic for HN is literally 'Anything that good hackers would find interesting.'

Perhaps, for politics, it would be good to try to limit political discussion to things that affect the technology world broadly, and startups specifically?

In the past, topics like those have been discussed here quite productively. Since the U.S. election, I've noticed posts getting flagged that seemed like they were worthy of discussion. I'm not sure if the flagging was ideologically motivated, or if it just happened because of election fatigue.

Even though I don't live in the U.S., I still like to see these discussions happen because the impacts of things that happen tend to have repercussions throughout the tech world.

Maybe limiting comments on political topics to people with 500+ or karma would make reasonable discussion more likely? It's not insanely difficult to react that level in a month or two if you're making thoughtful contributions to the community.

Limiting to "people with 500+ or karma" doesn't make for a reasonable discussion unless you like an echo chamber with 100% pure San Francisco values.

Submitting about three, maybe four, good frontpage-worthy technical stories can net you 500 karma.

There's no reasonable definition of "pure San Francisco values" for which that would be true even with a 20K karma threshold.

HN certainly isn't a representative sample of the (global or US) population, ideologically speaking, but the idea that HN is a pure representation of any single ideology, either in general or at any particular karma threshold where there are more than a handful of users, is absurd.

"Why does calloc exist?" That's the title of one of the articles linked on the front page right now. I would challenge anyone to show us where the NYT, Economist, Drudge, Huffington Post, etc have anything like this. They don't. Why not? Because it's not what people come there to read about. I would argue this is "Hacker News". If you want politics, what's wrong with the 10k other sites dedicated to these topics? To note, all of the aforementioned have tech sections discussing topics like the ones you mentioned here, but none of them have anything like Hacker News does on a daily basis. This isn't censorship anymore than Cosmopolitan magazine not covering Nascar very often (if at all). Know your audience.

An audience can have more than one interest. For example, tech sections in newspapers are roughly analogous to political stories on HN.

I agree with the week detox but I also agree that it probably shouldn't be permanent.

The equivalent analogy might be that the HN magazine has published too many politically slanted stories in recent issues and worries about losing sight of their larger editorial goals.

It's too easy and too cheap to make another politically provocative cover story. It might make sense to totally stop writing political stories altogether for a bit to break the habit.

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.

I'm with you. Far too many technocrats simply go "politics are not my problem", and before you know it you've helped build a police state.

If we discuss and use technology without considering it's ethical ramifications then we are on cruise control to hell.

To those who will respond with "he said politics, not ethics" - prithee - where is the line?

Stifling one angle of discussion stifles others.

>and before you know it you've helped build a police state.

this actually happened, as you know. "politics aren't my problem" should be called out as effectively authoritarian, as it's an admission that they'll do exactly as told.

Indeed - it has happened many times, and is happening now, precisely because the technocratic class wash their hands of politics and ethics, deferring responsibility infinitely upwards.

I'm of the unpopular opinion that we should each take responsibility for our own actions, and should not act on orders we consider ethically unacceptable. I could tell you stories about a great uncle who designed dams in Austria...

>and before you know it you've helped build a police state.

The hysteria of thinking that we (the US) are one or two steps away from a police state is exactly why I support the notion of political bans on my computer related news sites.

And if you live in a country that is approaching a real police state, I would guess there are more appropriate locations for discussing your political situation than HN.

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

I wonder why it is called an experiment at all. In the end this just the mods upholding the part of HN guidelines [1] that I like the most:

    If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

The problem with having stories and comments about mundane politics is also that they bury the technically interesting comments and they make stories on the the front page go away quicker. There are plenty of other sites where one can discuss about politics. Only on HN can one discuss, for example, with Animats (John Nagle) about the shortcomings and the history of the Nagle's algorithm [2,3] or getting lessons of public speaking from patio11 [4].

Mundane politic topics interfere with HN being the exception place it is.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9050645 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10608356 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6199544

The HN guidelines say most politics are off-topic, not all. So we are talking about a change here, though I suppose it's a bigger change in our (peculiar) world than in most HN users'.

Edit: but it's only a change for one week!

I support political detox week in HN!! Great idea! I was just ready a story and someone got in a political jab and the comment thread was off to the races. I took refuge in HN to GET AWAY from the hateful and uncivilized ranting that other news sites tolerate. As cliche' as this might seem, it was once considered the height of politeness to leave your political and religious baggage on the front porch and not bring it to the dinner table!

Just for curiosity's sake, when exactly do you think it was considered polite to not talk about politics around the dinner table?

I couldn't upvote your comment fast enough.

This whole idea about avoiding political discussions strikes me as very counter-productive. It reminds me of a quote attributed to a well-known person who once traveled these parts: Those who feel too intelligent to engage in politics will be governed by the less intelligent members of society.

That's not the exact quote, but I think it captures it very well.

More than at any other time, this is the time to be very engaged in political discussions, because our future is being decided right now.

If intelligent people refuse to be part of that discussion, we won't like the result.

Agree. I would argue that the "don't discuss politics or religion" with family and friends is partly what got us into this mess in the first place. The United States has become a nation where you can't have reasonable political discourse, because we've been taught not to talk about it. We put our heads in the sand and repeat our same beliefs over and over without any external challenge or validation. When we try to have a discussion, we're so ill-prepared and we're so entrenched in our positions that we're unable to talk rationally or civilly about the topics.

I would argue that the opposite is necessary, as a general rule of discourse: we should calmly and confidently talk about politics with anyone and everyone. We should be able to have discussions about things like taxes, the military, and technology, without resorting to screaming and shouting names.

One could make the argument that Hacker News is not a political forum, but I think explicitly discouraging political discourse is not healthy in the long run.

I absolutely agree with this. What may have seemed like a good idea to avoid short-term arguments, has instead allowed differences to fester to a point where people barely even agree on the terminology used.

> I would argue that the "don't discuss politics or religion" with family and friends is partly what got us into this mess in the first place

I don't think this is the problem.

The problem is the echo chambers people surround themselves with (and tech companies explicitly try to cultivate) and a slowly dying news media desperate for views, and whipping up outrage in order to get them.

And how do you dissolve -- or mitigate the effects of -- an echo chamber? By discussing contradicting views with those around you. The media has no control over that.

If this is a topic you're interested in, I think you'll find Jonathan Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" particularly useful. I've read it through twice and it's helped me better understand the nature of the issue.

Thanks for the recommendation!

I'm halfway through it now as a result of your recommendation of it a week ago. Thanks, I'm finding it great!

Very glad to hear it :)

As long as it's only a week, I support it.

But your distinction is a good one regarding partisan politics, vs politics in general.

The tech community is already perceived as being out of touch, it's not going to help if we keep our head in the sand.

I get enough politics elsewhere. I'm looking forward to seeing how this experiment turns out.

Well, this certainly trumps anything that Reddit is trying to do with out-right bans. They were like "Oh! BAM" A ban on /r/this and that. This election cycle felt like I was taking a lot of mesclin, ton of it too...

Anyway, I like the non-political week. Anyway... that's just my two pence...

I don't believe reddit banned any subreddits. Did they?

Reddit banned /r/pizzagate 12 days ago for permitting doxing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...

I'm not aware of any other recent significant bans, so I don't know what user samstave means by ``They were like "Oh! BAM" A ban on /r/this and that.''

This is actually quite a significant in my understanding.

> [...] for permitting doxing

Given how much DNC/HRC was promoted on Reddit, I do not accept that reason without second thought. Some basic "education by moderation" would have taught the sub not to dox while enjoying the conspiracy digging. For more info no that Pizzagate is about, see /r/conspiracy.

It was word play... no talk of politics and all that. Maybe you missed the jest in my post

I agree 100%. Banning politics for any period of time just because it's not palatable to some does not mean that the world of politics has no value to hackers and entrepreneurs. Politics is a big part of the world and the real world matters. I've said it before and I say it again. Insulated geeks tend to created chat app # 1000 with little to no real world advantages over chat app #999. Putting our heads underground just because we don't like the real world does not help anyone. An example is the appointment of Myron Ebell to head the EPA. Purely political news but climate change is an important part of HN users. The advantage of having politics as part of the HN community is that we have a special view of how technology works and having a better view of the real world gives us a chance to better apply what we know.

In my opinion, the fix is to mark then as political and give the user the choice to bypass them. Either as a prefix such as in "Tell HN" or to flag it as such via a clickable option. Putting a defacto policy against political news is a bad idea.

not talking about a specific topic for a week does not mean it's getting banned forever...

I don't think of it as an experiment. Just a quiet time to agree to focus on "hacking" and maybe remember there's more to life than politics.

To quote rms, "Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone."

Like it or not, politics affects all of us. We don't have anything to gain by ignoring it, and the more we ignore it, the easier it is for them to get away with things that are good for them and bad for us.

Where there are people, there is politics.

But that doesn't mean there should be only one kind of website.

I think the point is rather that any kind of website cannot avoid politics while simultaneously allowing for discussion.

Perhaps it can for one week though.

Agree, we should debate censorship!!

I see it more as "let's state that this isn't the appropriate forum for a political discussion for a week", as opposed to head-in-sand.

I'm okay with it, but would've preferred it in the weeks leading up to the election - I've got plenty of places for political news and discussion; that's not why I come here.

I too find this to be an argumentum ad absurdum.

    > The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity
    > and thoughtful conversation.

    > For one week, political stories are off-topic.

That said, I can support:

    > Those things are lost when political emotions seize
    > control.

This ban should be on political emotions seizing control; not on intellectual conversation surrounding political stories.

In theory, yes, of course.

In practice, that distinction doesn't hold up—not on the public internet and not at scale. The discussions are tribal.

I'd be happy to say "No Tribalism on HN" but how would we enforce it and how could anyone comply? Tribalism is not something people have conscious control over.

For many, HN is a source of news, not just conversation.

Perhaps a reasonable compromise could be to 'close' comments on such stories, rather than removing the links altogether?

In re your tribalism update - is 'tribalism' itself an issue? I don't think I personally mind someone being 'tribal' so long as their arguments are polite and reasoned.

I think "tribal" in this case specifically connotes the lack of polite and reasoned argument.

> Perhaps a reasonable compromise could be to 'close' comments on such stories, rather than removing the links altogether?

It's an interesting suggestion, and of course one that major media sites have run with.

In an HN context, it feels to me like one of those 'easy' fixes that make short-term pain go away, but at the expense of something valuable in the long run. My sense is that, uncomfortable as it is, it's best to stay within the contradictory situation and look for small improvements.

HN is in a position to do that where larger sites are not, so we might be able to make a contribution here.

What is the difference between "No politics on HN" and "No tribalism on HN" in terms of enforcement and compliance?

You can enforce "no tribalism" by (a) requiring all users to either declare a tribe, or neutrality; and (b) requiring all posts containing tribal content to be self-marked as such.

For instance, suppose users can select in their profiles that they are either apolitical, SJWs, or shitlords. When an SJW or shitlord posts, they are offered a check box which indicates whether the post contains any virtue-signaling or shitposting, respectively.

Obviously, shitposts should be seen only by shitlords and so on. Political signaling at your peers is normal discourse and part of benign human social behavior. Political signaling at your enemies, or at neutral parties who just don't care, is normal human warfare behavior.

So the box is a self-reported box. But etiquette can easily render it mandatory. The chimps on each side of the river can and must suppress their own tribal instinct to throw turds over it, or the gods will rain down fire on the offending chimps or possibly even the whole tribe.

And of course, apolitical users shouldn't see any political crap at all...

    > Obviously, shitposts should be seen only by shitlords
    > and so on.

Siloing political opinion is a terrible, even dangerous idea.

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

To support your point, there's a press release circulating from Google and Facebook right now. They've launched a program to share hashes (fingerprints) through a database identifying offending ("extremist") content so it can be more efficiently removed from the web. Yet, we aren't allowed to comment on this - I just posted it and the story was flagged.

There's a huge difference between saying "No more gratuitous flamebait about the US Election", and "no technical discussion permitted about any topic that could possibly be controversial."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110823

Maybe post it next week?

Prediction of any discussion on this topic:

- what's extremist? this is just going to be used to silence my particular views

- this is anti-free speech

- some mention how this is against net neutrality

- some mention of Trump and the cabinet

- some discussion on how Facebook is not taking ownership of the problem

- Facebook echo chambers

- diversity, racism, gender, safe places, identity politics (and likely bathrooms)

- how this is needed to create a safer online community

- something about how this ties in with the views of the MSM (and likely some misrepresentation of polls)

- something about how this wouldn't be an issue if the results of the election would have been otherwise

- something about the difference between the EC and the popular vote

All of these points have been discussed ad nauseum in other threads with no appreciably constructive discussion.

And for the life of me I can't think of any technical discussion that would be made on the topic other than possibly on how calculating all of these hashes/signatures isn't really going to be technically effective to catch everything.

What's useful about that?

mini-project idea: HN discussion generator, maybe markov chain based. Provide a topic, out comes a full-fledged HN-style discussion, complete with vote/flag estimates (not for posting to HN, of course)

mini-project idea: HN discussion generator

+1 - also an HN discussion auto-up/down-voter.

What's useful about that?

Personally, I've been struggling with the question of, are mega-services like Google and Facebook compatible with an open Internet? This helps to clarify my thinking.

Up to now I've been thinking about what evil they might do individually. Now I see the obvious: just like in any other industry, the objective is to reduce the market to a few major players (3-7). Then these become the only companies who can get "copyright clearances" or "non-fake news certification" in exchange for supporting their patrons' programs.

> avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand

It's more like going on a week long vacation to a tropical island and deciding not to check email/go online for the entire time.

The rest of the world will still be there when you get back, and you won't have missed anything substantive by unplugging while you were away.

Dr. Seuss said it best: https://twitter.com/erikwithfriends/status/80588582390006170...

There as about 18 billion other places on the internet for useless political arguments. HN was much more informative and intellectually stimulating when the immune system response to even hints of political bickering was brutal and swift.

When was that, and can you link to examples? I don't remember it that way.

I'd suggest that the point of avoiding political discussion is not just because it's unpleasant or divisive. In my eyes, the problem is that politics has so much implicit back-end that it cannot be usefully discussed on an internet forum. In the several paragraphs (at most) that we write to another, we convey so little while disagreeing on so much. Besides that, there's the issue that we spend much of political discourse not actually explaining ourselves, but rather signaling to others what camp they should put us in.

My wife and I, on several occasions each day, will say to one another, "we're describing two different things. We need to take this discussion far deeper, or end it altogether." That's the person with whom I talk more than any other person, and we aren't on the same page on divisive issues tens of times each week.

Without unpacking an issue to a level far beyond the length of forum posts, we cannot possibly hope to be on the same page in our discussions here when they veer into politics. It's better to favor the format of discussing interesting issues about which most of us are unfamiliar. That way, we get fresh eyes thinking about the issue, more polite discourse, and a more educational experience.

This is one of the best comments I've read on HN recently. Thank you!

Thanks, that means a lot!

One question that interests/concerns me is making judgement calls about what is/is not a political story.

Some links will be cut and dry, some will not. Some comments will be immediately identified as political, some will just be politics adjacent.

For instance, on a story about self driving cars, will it be appropriate to talk about UBI? On a story about cryptography, will it be acceptable to talk about how it applies to political dissidents?

Still, I have always found HN moderation to be reasonable, and I expect this to be the same. This is also something I think is desperately needed, we could all use a cooling off period, and it'll be nice not to be bombarded with US politics from yet another angle.

Hoping for the best, thanks dang + crew!

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. We're not so concerned about stories on other things that happen to have political aspects—like, say, software patents. Those stories aren't going to be evicted from HN or anything like that. For this week, though, let's err on the side of flagging because it will make the experiment more interesting.

So, do you mean only national politics?

I don't see why we would.

Okay. I'll bite. What should be done about posts on 18F? Or tech policy in the government? What about stories about legislation on encryption?

Are those all in the vein of things you think we should take a break from?

I think I covered that in my comment upthread? To me they're in the same category as software patents: fine in principle (unless a post is just ranty), but maybe err on the side of flagging the more politicized variants for this week.

Yeah. <3 your motivations, but i think this is just doomed to stifle important/legit conversations.

The idea that it's not possible to be thoughtful and political at the same time (and thus we should just cut out all/most the political stuff) is disheartening.

The problem isn't the politics, the problem is the lack of thoughtfulness.

I'm deeply ambivalent with this as an experiment. I hope it achieves what you're interested in without compromising the things I worry it will.

It's just for a week, so even your worst-case scenario isn't too bad. I did see someone complain that they might not get to argue about Trump's Secretary of State though (which sort of proves the point).

> The problem isn't the politics, the problem is the lack of thoughtfulness.

Politics is tribal, so we're talking about something that profoundly undercuts thoughtfulness. I don't know if it's impossible to have the two together, but I'm pretty sure it's impossible at scale.

> Politics is tribal, so we're talking about something that profoundly undercuts thoughtfulness.

Politics isn't always tribal and many people on HN are capable on thoughtful arguments on politics. HN suffers from the "LKML-effect". Few people can or are interested in following the linux-kernel mailing list, so naturally it only gets attention when Torvalds is screaming at someone. It's the same with politics.

When "diversity in tech" became more popular on the Internet it would get flagged off HN repeatedly. Some stories would get through and thoughtful discussions would start, but people quickly learned (maybe without knowing it) that if you just flame the story it would hit the controversy algorithm. So people would submit more sensationalist stories so it could get more upvotes to counter the flags and flame. Now the level of discussion is set and people don't mind how they express themselves on the topic.

If instead HN would have owned the issue and moderated it heavily it would increasingly have gotten better. People would have learned that flagging or flaming wasn't a good idea and those with more reasoned arguments would formed a critical mass to self moderate comments.

Programming is often tribal, yet there aren't a lot of flame over things like Erlang on HN. Because even if not a lot of people know Erlang, we haven't alienated all the Erlang programmers. So Erlang stories are generally advanced enough to not attract bad arguments and even they would someone would presumably challenge it.

Yes, there are political stories that aren't relevant and/nor thoughtful. But those aren't the stories that could, presumably, be categorized as "fit for HN" anyway. But by just banning entire segments of political but relevant stories is letting the "unthoughtful" people win at the cost of the thoughtful ones.

It might not be relevant enough to fight for discussions about Trump in general. But are we going to avoid to talk about e.g. surveillance, like we always have, just because the president is controversial? That would, if anything, be changing HN.

[edit: removed speculation about dang's opinion, since he responded]

But personally I think all of the topics you mentioned are likely to lead to flame wars in the comments about Trump, considering that all three are likely to be significantly affected by him once he takes office. Discussing those topics is still valuable, but unless there is some important development in one of them in the next week, taking a break seems pretty harmless to me.

I'm not dang, but I'll take a stab at it. If the tech aspects dominate, it belongs on HN, even in this week. If the political aspects dominate, it doesn't belong on HN this week (and maybe never).

In practice, that's going to be grey. But it gives a kind of guideline that may (or may not) be what the moderators are trying to do.

> But there's nothing new in that; the HN guidelines have always mentioned politics without defining the term, and we get by.

I mean, you clearly don't think that we have "gotten by"; generally a moratorium on a topic isn't required unless something is going wrong.

HN isn't immune from macro trends.

>The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet.

Am I to read that as "No Stories or Comments about Trump"? Maybe that wasn't the intention, but the specific hot buttons seem curiously chosen.

What hot buttons did I miss? I can think of gender. I'll add that one.

Edit: class, too.

Perhaps I should make explicit what seems obvious (to me) and say no, this doesn't have to do specifically with Trump. This whole year has been a political game-changer—think of Brexit before it. Perhaps our societies are becoming increasingly polarized, I don't know, but lots of things are going on in the outside world and Trump is just one of them, though of course a major one.

I wonder if developments on other online forums might be characterizing how this one seems to some users, but the truth is pretty mundane: I don't know about those other online forums because I don't have time to look at them. What we're talking about here is purely HN-grown.

I'm really just curious about whatever it is that prompted this. It still sounds like "US National Politics" vs politics in general.

I'd submit that it's right there in the writeup. Politics literally activates different regions in the brain, producing a situation in which rational discussion is difficult or impossible. Being a site that chooses to avoid that would make HN much more valuable, because there are so few that do, even fewer of any size.

I wouldn't support a moratorium forever, because there are topics that are both of perennial HN interest and also overlap politics, like intellectual property law and things specific to the tech industry. But I would support bumping off a lot more of the marginal stuff permanently. In general I would say that I see very little HN-specific contribution to most of those topics. (Not quite none, but hardly worth poking through the dross.)

I can tell you but you might be disappointed! What prompted this is a year (maybe two) of slow, slow reflection over how best to clarify what kind of site HN is, plus dismay over the uptick in harsh comments and primarily-political accounts that we've been observing as moderators this year.

When I say slow, I mean slow. I see part of my job (and it's my temperament anyway) as taking care to understand what this community is and how its system functions, and then to protect that and help it thrive. In practice this means that we take a long time (especially by startup standards, not that HN is a startup) to make changes, and have a strong preference for subtle changes. If we do make a significant change, you can be sure that we waited a long time for the need for it to develop.

But this isn't a significant change, not yet; it's a one-week experiment to see what happens.

Can I get a true or false response to each of the following props:

"A story about systemic gender discrimination in tech should be flagged under this policy."

"A comment regarding a person's startup experience that describes how their experience has been impacted by their race or gender identity should be flagged under this policy."

"A discussion of the sociological impact of Facebook's news curation tools should be flagged under this policy."

Those feel like gotcha questions in a cross-examination, but let me try.

I'm not sure what you mean by "this policy". Do you mean this one-week experiment to try something for a week and see what happens? I wouldn't call that a policy. To me that word implies something intended to be permanent, which is precisely what we're not proposing.

Either way, though, the answer can only be "maybe", because any one of your descriptions could cover a huge range along the axis we're talking about (intellectual interest vs. political battle). So it would depend on the specific stories.

Since we've asked people to err on the side of flagging for just this week, obviously the odds of a story being flagged become higher, for just this week. That doesn't make those odds 100% on those topics. And since the way things normally work is erring on the side of not flagging them, it's hard for me to see this week as very significant. That's actually why we're doing it this way: a week should be enough to learn something and not enough to be that big a deal, even in the worst case.

> ... since the way things normally work is erring on the side of not flagging them, it's hard for me to see this week as very significant. That's actually why we're doing it this way: a week should be enough to learn something and not enough to be that big a deal, even in the worst case.

I hope you take it in good faith that I'm not saying this in anger or in any way except a desire to make this community something worth continuing to participate in: you've made it, and publicly trumpeted that you've made it, more risky and more difficult for someone to be something other than a straight white male here. (That's not one from me; I am paraphrasing a friend who has pulled the ripcord. She expressed to me that the alt-right movement here would use telling you this herself as a way to hurt her either personally or professionally or both, because that's the world she has to live in because of how tech works.) You're tacitly accepting that this helps to silence those folks because their lives are inherently and inescapably "political" due to the deviance from the straight-white-dude status quo represented in tech. That's why I formed those questions as I did. They're not "gotcha" questions. They are hard questions in the gray areas of what you're saying, where you are--I believe not with malice, but you are--giving people who wish those elements of your community would go away forever can under your own policies (and I did use the word intentionally, because "experiment" is much more innocuous than I think this effectively becomes) silence them. Because when you aren't a straight white dude, your life is "political" by the standards of the tech world.

People look to this place for a kind of cultural leadership in tech. (Whether or not you want them to or whether they should!) You're taking a stand on the issues of the marginalized and the underrepresented whether you want to or not. I would ask that you consider whether it's the stand you actually want to be taking. 'Cause, I mean...silence means status quo wins.

Given perspectives like this, I think it's pretty hard to argue that it's possible to appease the activist community by feeding them.

The equation in their minds is essentially power == good. They want power over you, and over us, so that they can use this power to do good -- for the quite large set of human beings they feel themselves the protectors of (pretty much anyone but a "straight white dude").

No one has really found a limit on how much power they want, or how much good they think they can do. What we do know is: when you feed them, they get hungrier.

I actually agree with some of the points you've been making, both here and in other comments, and I've noticed and appreciate your clear effort to be civil. I know how far from easy that is.

The problem I have is that you seem to set at zero the other set of concerns here—the ones I described at the top—intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive conversation. Those things are the raison d'etre of this site. Do you think I'm wrong that political flamewars don't threaten them? Or that they don't matter?

I understand why a politically committed person might say "screw those values, the cause is too important", but that amounts to a scorched earth approach that doesn't see this place as much worth protecting and can easily progress to other battlefields for further scorching. My job is to make sure this place doesn't burn, so it's hard to take advice from that quarter. I'm all for suggestions about how better to serve the site's values—and by the way, 'civil' includes being welcoming to others—but objections that don't think they matter are harder to credit. It's pretty easy to say what we should do if you don't share our goals; not so easy to struggle with the tradeoffs if you do.

It's my view that for all its flaws, this community has something worth protecting. Perhaps it only lives up to 40% of its values, but that's still a lot, and it's the reason why people are attracted here to talk about things, some of which are inevitably political, in the first place. If you think significantly better is possible on the open internet, show me where; from what I've seen, everyplace else is so much worse that this one is clearly worth protecting, in the hope of achieving better. And if you think we're not interested in welcoming people who suffer from social or political disadvantages, I don't know what to tell you, other than that you'd be misappraising well-wishers. I hear you that it might happen anyway as an unwanted effect, maybe even is happening, and we care about that and take it seriously. But that information tends to come in complex political and ideological packages, and it can be hard, even for a well-wisher, to decipher signal from noise. The discourse around these things tends to be all-or-nothing, indeed extremely so. For us that's a double bind, because HN can't be either.

You've observed elsewhere that both sides argue with your moderation style.

This is true. However, you can observe here that one side petitions you; the other bullies you. This would be unusual in a genuinely symmetric situation...

I get smacked around a fair bit by that side too, so you won't get far with that tack.

"Smacked around?" The point is that the left is threatening you, and you're responding calmly, reasonably and at length. Shows the power dynamic. What would we even threaten you with?

One side wants to exist. The other side wants the other to stop existing. It's about as symmetric as lions and buffaloes, although a buffalo will kill a careless lion now and then...

> The problem I have is that you seem to set at zero the other set of concerns here—the ones I described at the top—intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive conversation. Those things are the raison d'etre of this site. Do you think I'm wrong that political flamewars don't threaten them? Or that they don't matter?

So...I can't come up with a better way to put this: do you really think that there are intellectually satisfying, civil discussions to be had when your existence is a matter of debate? Like... 'hga wasn't alone. You know that. He was just an idiot who went straight at it straight instead of hiding behind cites of The Bell Curve, instead of "but why should there be programs for black people or women?". I get your focus on "civil, substantiative conversation" and I respect that, but you gotta know as well as anyone that harm happens behind the "civil, substantiative conversation" of just-asking-questions and oh-it-can't-be-that-bad,-can-it?, the soup of toxic sexism and racism that's all over here over the last year or two. The functional result of "no politics" is that that won't be challenged, not that it'll go away. I agree with 'tptacek when he says that most political comments on HN are alt-right trolls; "hey guys, subtext rather than text" leaves a lot of shadows.

You and I are effectively re-litigating the same arguments that have come up in many other places. What would be awesome and a change of pace would be to learn what HN plans to do to make itself civil and welcoming to underrepresented folks, if that's the ethos you want to have. And you say you do, so I believe you. I mean, hell, I'd love to help out if I can; you have a bigger stake, but you're sure not the only person who thinks there's something worth having here.

(As far as other places on the internet--I have a few that come to mind. Open ones, but not ones on which I want to sic the jerkier part of HN just to prove a point in an argument. Shoot me an email if you're curious.)

Speaking of the alt-right, did you know Teen Vogue did a piece on them?

http://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-the-alt-right-is

Don't know about you, but I always trust content from Teen Vogue...

you know, I've come to like you dang. I still detest this place and everything it stands for, but seeing you chipper (if somewhat resentful about having to be chipper) towards the kind of problems that come with your job has a way of cheering me up. Like you know the check will clear, but even so, no one works for money.

not that you asked, but both as a clearer moderation policy than we've seen before and as an experiment, I think this is a good move. there is some regret that you're lagging well behind Reddit's knowledgebase, as this sort of thing has been done many times there, and there's not much new information to be found.

That said, it does exacerbate the filter bubble of this place: based on how subreddits' experiments have gone, expect the moderate center to support you and press to make it permanent, expect a little bit of grumbling that might make you think that you've made your point and don't need to make it permanent, and expect... a few more people to leave silently.

You're a prop for the VC establishment, but damn if you aren't an earnest human, too.

> I wonder if developments

The official press has committed collective suicide, and the whale-sized corpses are rotting in the street. Sometimes they twitch.

Things get pretty insalubrious.

If I recall correctly you've previously requested feedback on were they line is between moderation and censorship. I think this is the line. At least I define censorship as when certain things cannot be expressed despite being relevant and expressed in a similar way as other argument.

Removing political discussions is in itself tricky since the definition of what is political is subjective. But removing certain kinds of political discussions is even harder to do well, if not impossible. If it's still going to be allowed to post things about housing markets, education, economics, regulation or other areas where social science arguments are relevant. You must also be able to express arguments or submit stories that uses subjects like class or gender. Otherwise you are removing certain perspectives from the discussion in favor of arguments outside those perspectives, which is censorship.

I don't think polarization is the problem, nor even that society is more polarized now than before. In many way it's the opposite. Subcultures and large dividing issues are to some extent a thing of the past. People tend to have less developed views and less experience with other peoples views. Which makes disagreements more personal.

I think one reason this seems so incongruous is that the change in politics seems to be so clearly interlinked with the technology that we in Silicon Valley have created.

How are things like job displacement and social media not simultaneously political and fundamentally products of hackers?

It's a good point and I wouldn't argue otherwise.

I don't think that's the intention but honestly I wouldn't be too upset if that is what happens. I'm having trouble these days not seeing stories about Trump every single day on most of the sites I visit.

I have an idea - if it's in reference to a topic of CNN, NYT, WSJ, and WaPo's politics sections then it shouldn't be on HN.

It's pretty much what the guidelines have said all along.

Yet, isn't followed.

What if a tech topic (say the current Amazon Go thread) sparks a debate about 'is it socially acceptable or not?'

If the story gets big enough, the articles about Amazon Go's impact on workers will move from the tech section to the politics section of the newspapers. Where do you draw the line on HN in that case? Once they have move in the WaPo, we should stop talking about them?

I agree with others that moderating such a large online community is probably very hard and that dang and others probably experience bad times when comments thread inflame, but I think that a blanket ban on affairs of the cities is not the way to go.

Actually, I find it quite funny that we are having this debate, because in essence that is a political debate. Some US posters will consider it as hampering their right to free speech, some others will consider that making that space void of any political discussions is fine, some (as myself :-) ) think it is impossible and impractical... Debate around the frontiers of that is admitted here is entirely political, in the noble sense of the word.

As long as our debate is civil (and as far as I can see, it is), I think we should be allowed to have it. And what if my comments are not interesting and bring nothing to the debate? They will be downvoted to hell. HN, in contrast with Reddit, has apparently a very good track record with karma. It seems that brigading is not practiced around here.

I think it is probably linked to the fact that under a certain thresold, you cannot down-vote. My karma is indeed too low to downvote for instance and at first I was uneasy with the fact that I couldn't downvote...but I think I am starting to understand why it is actually a good rule for the board ;-)

I respect this decision and the difficulty of moderating in this crazy climate, but I think for most people those issues aren't so clearly divided. Take, for example, privacy, where a lot of the positions are based in class and political ideologies, and the outcome of that discussion very much affects tech. Or on the ethics of technologies that replace workers (like the recently announced amazon go) - clearly we need to have a discussion based on political ideologies to talk about whether universal basic income, job retraining, or something else is a solution to real fallout from these trends. Hacker news is close to my only source of smart and civil discussion about these relevant, but politically charged discussions.

I agree hatefully ranting is not working but I don't think politely steering away from the difficult part of the conversation is prudent either. I'm looking forward to hacker news being a place we can still have these difficult discussions in a civil tone after this moratorium.

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?

I can't answer for 'dang but I would definitely flag that post during a "political detox week".

Also: HN threads on that particular topic (statistical evidence for diversity in the industry and its impact) are invariably a shitshow here. I am guessing your political leanings w/r/t/ industry diversity are identical to mine, and I do not see what HN generally gains from the trolling and nastiness that occurs on "diversity as a phenomenon" threads.

The solution to "Certain types of story result in unpleasant arguments" doesn't have to be "Prevent that type of story from being visible". Media sites will happily disable comments on certain stories, but haven't extended that to not reporting on those stories in the first place.

It doesn't have to be, but it may be that it still should be the solution to that problem. It makes sense for, for example, news sites to disable comments on some stories because the comments aren't the most valuable portion of the site: the news is.

But I think that in large part the value of HN is in the comments. If HN isn't able to discuss a story productively, what's the point of that story being on HN?

Because the subject is interesting and the content informative?

Why not start the site that engages with the intersection of politics and technology more directly? I'd be happy to participate.

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.

Sorry I didn't see this earlier. That's a tough one. On the one hand it's a substantive news story on a subject of core interest to HN. On the other hand it's bound to result in a highly politicized discussion, if not a poster child for the kind of flamewar we're trying to avoid. So I don't have a good answer for you.

Since we asked people to err on the side of flagging for just this week, I don't think we can ask them not to flag that one. It would be fine to post it next week though.

> The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion

I feel like trying to ban discussion of these conflicts will lead to the same outcome that reddit's weird "free speech" policy had, if more subtly. If Hacker News is the place where racist, misogynist, fascist hackers can feel particularly safe, that's going to be the kind of people you attract, at the expense of marginalized hackers.

There is no neutral option around this kind of politics and I'll be sad to see HN throw marginalized people under the bus to ensure the comfort of the privileged.

>I feel like trying to ban discussion of these conflicts will lead to the same outcome that reddit's weird "free speech" policy had, if more subtly. If Hacker News is the place where racist, misogynist, fascist hackers can feel particularly safe, that's going to be the kind of people you attract, at the expense of marginalized hackers.

How are marginalized people "thrown under a bus" here? Not allowing discussions about race and gender is not equivalent to that at all.

I can barely tell the gender or race of anyone here.

I know a lot of people here. I know their genders, I know their races, in some cases I know their sexual orientations. Because they have talked about personal experiences here. But the world is fundamentally and inescapably political and this policy will, full-stop, be used as a bat to silence those people and prevent them from sharing their personal experiences when those experiences threaten the white-empowering, male-empowering status quo. There is no world in which it won't be.

Consider an article about discrimination in the hiring practices of startups. Is that "political" under this policy? My guess it is. And so out come the flags and the status quo is reinforced by the thunderous claim that it's Just Not A Problem--because, whether or not flags mean "this is bad and obviously unimportant" to 'dang, that's what they mean to the audience. And so, incrementally, the culture here gets worse. And worse. And worse.

Hacker news does not have the responsibility to improve or stop discrimination that happens outside the website. There is barely any discrimination that occurs on this website. Again, the majority of people cannot tell the race or gender of others unless it is explicitly stated.

And those issues are not just a one sided affair. It is politics after all. HN is impartial in that it silences both sides of that story (the other side being affirmative action or racial discrimination in favor of those who are supposedly oppressed).

With an assumption of good faith, let me try another way to express this to you: silence is, functionally even if not intentionally, support of the status quo. As such, the experiences of white men are implicitly apolitical under this policy and will be allowed. The experiences of women and minorities are implicitly political under this policy and will be flagged as such.

Is the incipient problem, for those not so fortunate as to be born white and male, perhaps a little clearer now? (And, to be clear, I am a white male. I'm just not blind to the concerns of others.)

Most of Hacker News contains shared experiences where identity level experiences are irrelevant. That appears to be the point of Hacker News becoming apolitical to me, to avoid bringing in experiences that can differ between people and cause arguments.

I'm not a white male and I never think to bring up issues affecting my group to the discussion. It doesn't brother me that those issues are barely brought up.

> Most of Hacker News contains shared experiences where identity level experiences are irrelevant.

I would suggest that maybe this isn't true for people who aren't you. And who aren't me. Many things, like getting a job as a software developer or talking to my boss--things I think you and I can probably agree are likely shared experiences?--feel very apolitical for me. And it is understandable that they feel that way: because I am the beneficiary of the biases extant in society. I get the breaks. It's "normal" for me to look around and see nobody having it easier than I do and when I fuck up (god, do I fuck up!), I am not othered so that my actions reflect on my race or gender, but on me specifically.

Such an "apolitical" world, such an "unbiased" world, may not exist for, say, women or African-Americans or trans folks. And sweeping that realization under the rug is, by itself, a political act in favor of the continuation of the incentives and the policies that create that situation that lets me be comfortable and "apolitical" and ensures that other folks cannot be either.

Nothing is apolitical: it just may work to your benefit. And it usually works to mine--I am fortunate to have the grace to understand just how lucky a dice roll I got, and that's why I can't be on-board with policies that want to prevent discussion of whether the dice are loaded or not.

> Many things, like getting a job as a software developer or talking to my boss ....

Note the "most". Pointing out one counter example where discussion barely shows up isn't a counterpoint. I would also argue that those experiences are shared but that is its own political discussion.

> Such an "apolitical" world, such an "unbiased" world, may not exist for, say, women or African-Americans or trans folks. And sweeping that realization under the rug is, by itself, a political act in favor of the continuation of the incentives and the policies that create that situation that lets me be comfortable and "apolitical" and ensures that other folks cannot be either.

I don't think it is reasonable to feel uncomfortable about not being able to discuss two sided issues on one board out of millions on the internet.

Political discussion is inherently caustic and damaging to discussion boards. Only small, heavily moderated boards can produce productive discussions. It is in the nature of simple user registration and no posting restrictions.

> Note the "most". Pointing out one counter example where discussion barely shows up isn't a counterpoint. I would also argue that those experiences are shared but that is its own political discussion.

Virtually any interaction between two people could be put into this bucket. If you want to just talk about adjust-your-pince-nez tech stuff, Lambda the Ultimate exists. Pretty much everything with more of a human element than that is intractably political--you just may not have a dog in the fight.

Hiring is political. Firing is political. Performance reviews are political. Getting funded is political. SOPA is political. Hate speech is political. Wikipedia NPOV is political. The surveillance state is political. Facebook's content filtering to show you what you want to see is...political.

This isn't stuff that "barely shows up". It's the core of the culture. Computers, ultimately, barely matter to tech--people do. And people are intractably political.

> I don't think it is reasonable to feel uncomfortable about not being able to discuss two sided issues on one board out of millions on the internet.

I'm being careful not to frame your arguments poorly; I would appreciate the same charity. I feel uncomfortable with tacit support for a white, male status quo on one of the more read, more important culture sites that are in the tech community of which I am a part.

The point I was trying to make is that there's people who exist outside those shared experiences, and yet have valuable contributions to make to discussion on HN, but they probably aren't gonna because banning politics will create an atmosphere where they don't feel safe or welcome.

The fact that you think that this set of statements is framed in a neutral or apolitical way is proving the point, you know?

You caught that, didn't you? I've been careful to offer my responses in good faith, but I couldn't help but notice that, yes, his defense is coming from a pretty regressive starting point.

The words people pick tell you a lot about them, don't they? ;) Almost like they mean things...

> the world is fundamentally and inescapably political

Thank you for saying this.

It feels like what we're seeing here from HN leadership is denial - or abdication – of moral responsibility. That's a choice you can make, and it's known to be an argument going on within Facebook right now. It doesn't impress me much, but in all honesty, HN doesn't; this place has real problems with sexism and racism.

Speaking personally, I guess it means I'm unlikely to ever apply to YC, because I weigh these moral – call it social justice, that's fine with me – considerations pretty highly in choosing who I work with. Other people will find different personal calculuses here. Many YC founders are my friends and they speak highly of the people involved; this just happens to be over my personal line.

Nevertheless, I'm still just... disappointed.

Hey, didn't I just run into you over in the other thread...?

But, yeah, you're welcome. I've been here long enough that not saying anything was untenable. Email's in my profile if you'd like to talk further.

In some contexts, not discussing an issue is equivalent to claiming that there is no issue.

For example, a story about a new data analysis tool or technique used by police would presumably still be on topic. Would a comment discussing how this tool might disproportionately affect minorities be considered off-topic politics? If that story is allowed but the discussion about race is not, the marginalized people might feel like they need to go elsewhere.

The problem with many political topics is that we already know the conversation and the outcome.

1. Present a new data analysis tool used by police

2. Comment about disproportionately affect minorities

3. Response with FBI data explaining it's because certain minorities commit more crime

4. (devolves into flame fest)

... n. Complains marginalized people might not read the site

n+1. That's their personal choice

n+m. (more flame fest)

And hence why suggesting the content here stay technical instead of political is the best of several non-perfect choices.

I understand that, and I like this experiment because of that, but think about it from the other perspective. If you felt like your life was in danger, and the entire community was like "mmm, this conversation isn't intellectually stimulating enough for me, please don't bring it up here", what would you think? It's one thing to go to some narrowly defined conference and find that politics are avoided, but it's another to go to a sort of general hangout for like-minded people and find that they won't acknowledge people like you.

It's sort of like saying "oh, I don't see race". Well, everyone else does, and not acknowledging racism is just about as bad as actually being racist. Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.

And another analogy, telling people there are more appropriate places to discuss politics is sort of like people telling Black Lives Matter/Colin Kaepernick/etc. to please protest in a more appropriate manner. There's no point in "appropriate" protests and appropriate forums, they are ignored. You have to bring this stuff up in places where people want to ignore it, otherwise nothing will ever change.

If my life was in danger, I'd have higher priorities than HN. The dictionary has a word for people who "feel" their life is in danger when it's really not: delusional.

HN will get really messy if the comment board becomes a place to protest.

IMO bringing your political grievance de jour to a tech site like HN is a sign of immaturity. Telling these people to grow up or leave isn't a bad thing. Conservatives lived through Obama and liberals will do fine under President Trump.

Maybe, I'm just trying to explain the other perspective. Saying "Conservatives lived through Obama and liberals will do fine under President Trump" is a political position, and adopting a politics ban supports that position.

All I'm trying to say is that it's important to recognize that you are adopting a political position here, even though it doesn't feel like it. I'm not trying to say you're wrong, just that you have to acknowledge you have a position, and you can't escape by calling something a "political grievance de jour". That itself is a political statement.

I totally agree any statement within the spectrum is considered a political position.

Thank you for the good conversation.

The thing is, the people who are being racist, misogynist, fascist, etc. are also being political. And so their posts will get flagged too.

I think the idea is, basically, that rather than "calling out" these things and getting into a big argument about them each and every time they happen, you just (indicate to the mods that you want to) blow them out of the sky.

> The thing is, the people who are being racist, misogynist, fascist, etc. are also being political. And so their posts will get flagged too.

No offense to the HN moderation team, but I have very low confidence that this is going to be how it works out. :/

How does one contact the moderators to let them know that a comment is racist/sexist/whatever? I don't see any "flag" UI at the comment level, and I don't know who the mods are by name.

If you click on the timestamp of a comment, you should see a 'flag' link. I don't recall, though it might be karma gated. You can also reach the mods via email to hn [at] ycombinator.com.

I'm not sure I follow this logic, but I sense that my comment was more confusing than clarifying, since I'm pretty sure it doesn't lead to the consequence you're talking about and that's not what we intend (quite the opposite).

The intention here is simply to treat political stories as off-topic for a week. The question of what counts as a political story vs. not, is pretty much an impossible one to answer in the general case, so I probably shouldn't have tried.

The fear is mixing the x and y axis of opinions. Most people can probably see why something like party, ideology or nation can be damaging. Not talking about those things generally doesn't prevent people from having a certain opinion on another level. But then you mix that with things like race, gender and class where wanting to talk about it generally (but not always) constitute an opinion.

If Hacker News is the place where racist, misogynist, fascist hackers can feel particularly safe, that's going to be the kind of people you attract, at the expense of marginalized hackers.

I appear to be the top ranked openly female member here and my experience of HN dramatically improved when Dan Gackle (aka dang) took over the role as lead moderator of the site. I have faith in his judgment, plus I have substantial soft skills myself. I do not believe he is going to do anything to shape HN into the sort of thing you are positing here.

I am also openly a woman. And I'm probably one of the lowest-ranked members on here, precisely because this community is already so fucking much a "place where racist, misogynist, fascist hackers can feel perfectly safe". So i only come over here when something is really interesting or really appalling, because it is a toxic awful cesspit of a community and Mr. Gackle doesn't seem to have done any better than any of the other mods in that regard. IDK why you have any more faith in him than in any of the rest of them.

I have recently noticed multiple women with longstanding accounts that were (mostly or entirely) inactive for apparently a very long time but which have recently started being active again. I also have exchanged emails with Dan Gackle on a number of occasions and he has banned accounts for making ugly personal attacks at me that were completely out of line (and gender based) and he has also engaged in more limited, but useful interventions.

There are other things that I am not willing to comment on publicly, but which inform my opinion.

I am sorry your experience has been so negative. I certainly had a pretty difficult time at one time, but I have always had a pretty good opinion of HN and I felt I had reason to work on the problem from my end, since I am good at certain things. I believe it is generally getting better and women are generally being received differently here than what happened at one time.

I feel certain that after gawking in horror at the trainwreck on this thread i will just go back to quietly pretending HN doesn't exist for another few months, because i cannot even. And i'll continue to warn literally every marginalized, subaltern, or otherwise vulnerable person in tech i know to stay the fuck away from here.

Looking through your last couple comments you seem like you're constantly looking to get into political arguments by writing inflammatory comments mostly regarding gender. I'm not surprised that when you fish for a political argument, you end up attracting the worst that the site has to offer.

It would be super nice if you did not do this. I assure you, women who have been here a long time have good reason to have baggage. Her approach isn't productive at the moment, but your comment will read to quite a lot of women as victim blaming and drive them away.

This undermines the progress that some people here have work incredibly hard for.

RIGHT OVER HERE there are HN users spouting the usual disproven gender-essentialist bullshit about women in STEM fields: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13101949

I have no idea why you feel so much more comfortable at this place than MeFi - MeFi isn't good, by any stretch of the imagination, but at least when people get banned for horrific misogyny or anti-Semitism people don't come along later and say "but they had great technical contributions!"

I understand your anger. But I do not understand why you feel some need to take it out on me.

I do not need to justify to you why I think mefi is far worse than hn. Feel free to go hang there and stop adding your toxic comments to hn, like you said you would prior to deciding to come back and dump on me some more.

a) I wasn't taking it out on you; b) I don't generally comment at MeFi either, and for most of the same reasons?

It sure comes across like you are taking it out on me.

The comments you claim would not happen on mefi would likely get deleted. They don't here. That does not make mefi better. It just makes it easier to pretend it is or to be fooled by appearances.

dang doing moderation has definitely improved the place and I sure don't want to ascribe sinister motivations to him. I hope it'll work out okay! But I'm worried.

The concern of well intentioned individuals is a potential force for good. I wouldn't want you to simply let your guard down and I have certainly argued with dang myself.

Best.

I don't understand how race, gender, and class in particular can possibly be separated out from tech any more so than software patents. A community that has been so obsessed with disrupting any and all aspects of life can't ethically refuse to discuss the consequences of doing so.

I would assume that discussion about software patents would fall under the ban, too. You can conceivably draw a line between discussions about implementation and discussions about the laws affecting different implementation. Wouldn't all discussions of the law fall under politics? Maybe just all discussion of potential changes in laws?

GP suggested otherwise. Either way the bit about ethics was the point I'd prefer to discuss

I think a detox with clearer rules would have been better

No Trump/Clinton stories for a week.

These are the ones that are the major trouble makers. And since there is no chance of an article on the culture war not mentioning those people - this will rid of the second tier stories too.

Man, this strikes me as a really lopsided exercise. And to what end? The visceral reactions about politics are a part of US society. Hiding what's going on only makes things worse. As hackers, we should be finding a shared language to work these problems out.

Yes we should, but the creative energy you're alluding to is the first thing to leave when the vitriol starts flowing.

What should we do? I don't know, but I don't think a week off is going to hurt anybody.

> pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion

I'm very sad to see this, dang. Complaining about identity politics is a form of identity politics. Because we white people are the default, banning discussion of non-whiteness reinforces whiteness. Banning discussion of gender similarly favors men, especially in tech.

You and I might experience this experiment as a detox. But it is increasing toxicity for those whose identities and concerns you are trying to erase.

In normal times, I might shrug. But these are not normal times. Tech companies are having to consider whether they'll be making lists of Muslims and turning them over to the authorities. We are having to ask ourselves, "Do we really need to store all this user data if we might have to give it up in secret?" Refusing to discuss politics when these issues are on the table is actively supporting a side.

I object in the strongest terms and will not participate. I won't be back for a week. If it keeps up, I'll be closing my account.

That comment was a mistake on my part. The point I was trying to make was a lesser one, and the misunderstanding it gave rise to was much greater, so I should have thought of a completely different angle or just not bothered. Usually I can spot that sort of bug in advance, but a discussion this prolonged and intense fries the brain.

Very fair points you bring up, particularly the examples. I share your optimism however

I think this is exactly how we got into this situation in the first place. Politics absolutely has a lot of effect on the other things that we talk about here. Trying to eliminate all talk of politics will see a huge void in the data needed to make intelligent decisions, IMO.

You've pointed out some good examples above, and while you can talk about those things without any politics, it's a very shallow-feeling conversation, IMO.

Still, it'll be interesting to see how this week goes.

Agreed, this is hard. My personal benchmark is: does this article have information that would change a political viewpoint? If so, then political talk feels like fair game.

Story where the NSA creates a practical quantum computer? Let's talk about what this means.

Story where a researcher makes incremental progress towards a quantum computer? Let's not talk about how long it will be until the NSA can break all crypto.

It's definitely a grey area, but I do there there are tiers of political talk. The best discussions have reactions to new information, not re-hashed and pre-established opinions.

> does this article have information that would change a political viewpoint?

Now that is a "unicorn" in the sense of a mythical beast! You can dig into usenet archives from the 80ies, and find people debating a lot of the same stuff they do today. People mostly do not change their minds about things.

>Story where the NSA creates a practical quantum computer? Let's talk about what this means.

And who is going to keep the comments on track? The typical anti-US people will come out in droves to derail. So we'll end up with the same issues, but instead we'll have political filtering done on the accepted articles themselves that could generate bias.

Its not like all these people will suddenly stick to the topic. In fact, I find many articles that involve India, China, Russia, Brazil, etc usually have a top comment of "But the US is worse." There's a lot of knee-jerk anti-US sentiment here and filtering things out isn't going to change that.

Perhaps you missed where they are moderating comments, not just stories.

> On a story about cryptography

Or Net Neutrality. Or research/tech about Climate Change.

It seems like this could easily be abused by partisans who want to deflect the issues. Requests to have mods delete climate change articles about a hot startup doing solar power seems to empower climate deniers. Requests to have mods delete Trump's anti-net neutrality appointments seems to empower Trump supporters.

I don't think this is too hard. Cool tech about cheap, efficient solar power: Tech. The "how to talk to climate change deniers" submission I flagged a few minutes ago: Not tech.

You don't even have to hit tangents in comment threads to run into issues. Crypto backdoors? H1B changes? There are a lot of topics that are both political and of very high interest to hackers generally and HN specifically. If Congress rams through a crypto backdoor bill in the lame duck session, are we seriously not going to have a thread about it on HN?

> what is/is not a political story.

How about everything in the form of: We should XYZ.

There should be designted place for these type of discussions. So we can 1. Avoid repetitiveness. 2. See others response. 3. Reach conclusions.

Interestingly, I don't think this is actually a "discrete logic" kind of problem—i.e. it's not the kind of problem where (doing the moral equivalent of) tagging everything and having an expert system/business rules engine (as instantiated in a moderation staff) do something according to the tags is the optimal way to go about things.

The thing about political discussion—the identifying feature of it, which is the same thing that makes it such a problem—is that it sucks people into it. There can be four productive subthreads of a discussion all peacefully chatting, and then a political subthread gets started and from then on, all the comments end up on the political tangent subthread and discussion of the original non-tangential topic is forgotten.

This is a structural pattern to how posts happen—the kind of thing you can identify with linear regression on time series of post metadata. Politics is almost literally a "black hole": it has greater "mass" than other subjects, sucking commenters away from their original intent toward political subthreads. If you model subthreads as having that sort of "gravitational force", you can predict the ones with the highest "pull" will be political in nature. (Well, that, or a subthread indulging HN's fun habit of primary sources showing up to make comments on stories about them. But those subthreads likely have very low "controversy" metrics [in the Reddit ranking algorithm sense], which can be used to filter those out from political consideration.)

The idea that you can somehow separate "political" from "non-political" stories seems poorly-thought-out and censorious. Who will make these decisions? It seems clear that many posts that are nominally "about tech and only tech" are pushing some political viewpoint, whether it be the benefits of mass computerization, workaholic tips and tricks, or protection from civil rights violations using encryption.

HN pretends to be largely apolitical, but the quick disappearance of certain threads or topics seems to show that it has a heavy slant towards a sort of techno-utopian quasi-libertarianism that wants to work its way out of challenges to its ideas by sort of putting its fingers in its ears. Instead of attempting to "depoliticize" itself, maybe HN should spend time developing a better understanding and clarification of the extremely political stance it takes every day?

> heavy slant towards a sort of techno-utopian quasi-libertarianism

Sometimes I amuse myself by imagining a service in which HN users who make opposing claims about its "heavy slant" are introduced to each other.

Has there ever been an attempt to run a survey and settle the question? Of course, the risk of the results creating the kind of thread you're trying to avoid with the detox week is pretty high...

Such surveys aren't reliable. If anyone wanted to classify comments manually they might come up with something, but I'd guess it would just lead to more arguments.

It's not possible for HN to have "no political position" on issues such as tech.

As the Amazon Go thread, and this comment from PG demonstrate, the default position - where there is no discussion of race / gender / class / diversity - is for the protections that minority groups enjoy to disappear.

Either because no-one thinks to protect them (as white working classes feel has happened to them) or because SV bigwigs see those protections as an inconvenient fact that should be swept away by technological disruption.

pg: "Any industry that still has unions has potential energy that could be released by startups."

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104?lang=en

It's a fallacy to think that HN and hackers can somehow obsolve themselves from that responsibility any more than it thinks it can obsolve itself from responsibility toward homeless in SF.

By all means take the decision you feel you need to to maintain your community - but don't under any circumstances pretend it's a politically neutral one because it just cannot be.

I think we can read PG's tweet a little more favorably.

I consider myself liberal, and generally in favor of things such as unions, workers'-rights, and anti-discrimination regulations, that serve to balance power in our society.

That said, I can definitely see an argument that unions are inefficient - they slow down rate of change, introduce barriers to new innovation, and require one-size-fits-all negotiation. This doesn't mean we need to remove unions, just recognize the tradeoffs.

Furthermore, I would myself argue that unions are a response (and a rational one) to an inefficient, asymmetric power structure. i.e., unions are a symptom of a problem, not a problem.

example:

Let's say there's an industry, where in a competitive, open, and rights-respecting market, workers could typically get $15/hr.

If there's a monopoly-employer and un-unioned employees, they can suppress the wage to $10/hr, concentrating profits to the employer. If there's a union, and no monopoly of employers, the union can force the wage to $20/hr, stifling the industry, and possibly preventing new employees from entering the marketplace freely. If the employers and union are at equal power levels, the wage sits around $15/hr, but there's a lot of red tape, and slowed rate of innovation, because of the nature of negotiations.

If you create a company that hires non-union workers, but treats them as well or better as unioned workers would be treated, you should have a competitive advantage.

Do you really feel the political discussion here advances the interests of any of those marginalized groups? I've seen people explicitly change their minds on technical issues due to comments here; politics, not so much. Whatever the solution is, I don't think it can be found on HN. The recent flare up in politics here seems far more likely to make things worse if anything.

I also don't see how it is impossible to restrict discussion to technical issues that are not politically relevant. Here's a few things on the front page receiving quite a bit of discussion right now:

  - R vs. Python for Data Science
  - Why does calloc exist?
  - Mux – A lightweight, fast HTTP request router for Go

I haven't read all the comments, but I think you'd have to try really hard to discuss anything political on those, unless you consider language flamewars political. So there appears to be plenty of things to discuss on HN other than politics without moving to a malignant "default position".

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.

> I'm seeing a lot of people say this is a bad idea. I completely disagree. (...) Hacker news is a news aggregation medium for "Hacker News."

I'm not sure yet whether I think this is a good or bad idea, though this I'll say: HN is not just a news aggregation medium. If in the beginning it were, it is no longer. It is now much more defined by the people on here. Like reddit, the story pages give the majority of screen real estate to comments. It's not a stretch to say people on here drop by, to a greater extent, for the discussions, ideas, and tips - and to a lesser extent, to be exposed to a story or link that they might not have eventually found elsewhere.

Maybe it shouldn't be? Yes that's a question because this is an experiment, they aren't saying it shouldn't be.

I'm 100% behind you if they try to ban politics on HN. But for a week it's ok, we'll live and we may even learn something.

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.

It's an experiment. Experiments are good. They allow us to take risks and see if something good or bad happens.

Banning politics on HN is not what they are proposing, they are proposing a cease fire on HN. That is by no means a bad idea.

If they propose banning news on HN permanently I'll get out my pitchfork too (assuming the experiment goes poorly). But lets put them away for a week, then talk.

Based on Agnolia, these are the most popular stories from the past week on HN that might be construed as "political":

#17 Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for a week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404

#23 Canadian journalist's detention at US border raises press freedom alarms https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13092330

#29 Help Us Keep the Archive Free, Accessible, and Private https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065599

#37 Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103611

#49 War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068641

#59 FBI to gain expanded hacking powers as Senate effort to block fails https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13074285

> #17 Tell HN: Political Detox Week

I see what you did there

As an experiment, I love the idea!

Personally, I've found it hard to escape US politics on many of the sites I frequent. The comments/discussion often end up relating the topic to the last US election in some manner - and an unproductive conversation follows.

Just my experience, but again - love the idea of running an experiment here.

If anything, Hacker News should be more political, and it ought to get its political act together. People here are always talking about moral issues, implications of technology on the working class, climate issues, accessibility, etc.

Well, talking about those issues is just moral posturing without <power>, and politics is the negotiation of power.

These are all political issues. If you care about your fellow person, you already have the seeds of a <political> motivation. You want to change the way the world works -- but that takes power, power like the AMA or AARP has.

People who duck their heads in the sand and scorn politics and power as something dirty are counterproductive to this highly disorganized technical community with almost zero union potential.

Did the Internet transform the economy with <power>? Do people ride Uber because Uber has power? Did Apple coerce people into buying its products by the billions?

I think technology coupled with a market economy shows us the way that societal transformation happens from the emergent order of individuals acting in their own self-interest, rather than being forced to choose a "better way" by those in power.

Did the Internet transform the economy with <power>? Do people ride Uber because Uber has power?

Unquestionably. Uber has power because it occupies the bulk of mindshare for ride sharing. The internet has power because that's where people are. You can't argue that facebook, MSFT etc... don't have POWER.

Did Apple coerce people into buying its products by the billions?

You're conflating power with coercion. It's possible, and desirable, to have power without coercion. Most power is not coercive - it's called "soft power."

Though radicals could argue that even soft power is coercive.

Just from your post, I have a pretty fair idea that, if you got political power, you wouldn't want to go in directions that I'd like.

Let HN be HN, where we can have a reasoned discussion. If you want to politically organize the tech community, take it somewhere else.

I understand the sentiment here, but it sounds a little...wishful.

Our political climate is affecting all of us in many ways, and we need to process what's happening. We need to do that carefully and constructively. I want to know the subtle political aspects of many of the stories I read on HN.

That said, I'll play along for the week. I hope what comes out of this is a push to encourage critical thinking about the political aspects of important stories, not to push political conversation off of HN entirely.

Thanks for this. Your willingness to be open-minded is very much in the spirit of the idea.

Who decides what's "political"? Are discussions of regulations surrounding Uber political? The ongoing Tesla/dealership feuds? Using machine learning to detect fake news? New immigration policy that impacts H1B tech workers? The impact of Brexit on tech companies? Restrictions on cryptography?

I'm split on this: On one hand, firm moderation and keeping things on-topic makes for a good forum for discussion. On the other, this could easily be used by YC as a tool to say, silence criticism of YC for not disavowing Peter Thiel. Either way, there need to be clearer guidelines around what's allowed and what's not.

this could easily be used by YC as a tool to say, silence criticism of YC for not disavowing Peter Thiel

Is there anyone here who hasn't read that criticism yet?

And read it right here on HN. There were more than a couple submissions that dealt specifically on this topic.

"Political" = anything mods don't like. Soon this will be like reddit and other "politically correct" places. It would be nice to know about changes in mod positions, because I suspect there might be few in order to implement "correct" political atmosphere.

> here need to be clearer guidelines around what's allowed and what's not.

We're happy to clarify (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614) but it's impossible to draw a precise line. Moderation is about a few core principles and a lot of case-by-case judgment calls, and it's inherently unsatisfying.

Whatever rules we have, though, we apply them less rather than more in cases where YC itself or a YC startup is at issue. That's one of the rules :)

This is amazingly naive. "We apply them less rather than more in cases where YC itself or a YC startup is at issue." You realize, of course, that YC, PG, and SA all drive the tech zeitgeist to some extent or another. News that affects YC itself is all tech and politics, because YC affects these things.

By that logic it affects a butterfly in China too. I'm talking about what we can control.

Now you're being amazingly reductive to win a rhetorical point. HN drives a conversation. You are choosing to change the parameters of that conversation. You are making a political choice.

I don't care about rhetorical points but I do care about being able to truthfully say that we moderate HN less, not more, when stories about YC or YC startups are involved. That's a fact, and one we take particular care with.

Oh look, exactly what I was afraid of is already happening: https://twitter.com/jdp23/status/806236638783291392

Given that ycombinator does specifically involve themselves in issues of policy such as universal basic income and others, I find this move to be at odds with what ycombinator actually is.

Once some ideas are too 'dangerous' or too contentions to be discussed, there is little hope of ever moving forward in solving the very real problems we have in this world.

Characterizing values as fragile things which cannot withstand the rigors of robust debate is also a troubling viewpoint.

edit: typo.

Or, to take an even more cynical position, "While we totally can moderate discussion to keep things within our standards of conduct, we find it's too much work, and would rather just not have to deal with it."

...then go write another political policy blog post about how a board member's politics aren't representative of a company's mission, etc, rinse, repeat.

Very political board members need safe spaces too.

It's time for HN to move to an independent forum.

I'm not really a fan of this move. I don't see it as an addiction that reduces its power over us by abstaining for a period of time. I also don't agree with applying system effects to individuals - while political discussion can appear to create a dulling or muting effect overall it doesn't mean that individual people aren't being positively influenced, in ways that might have even larger positive effects on the system over time. Similarly, preventing short term conflict might have negative longer term system effects over time.

The detox/immune-system metaphor seems really suspect in other words. You could just as easily argue that there is a "virus" (the changing political realities, new realities dawning on us), and that ignoring the "virus" or "symptoms" will make the adjustment that much more traumatic, the later we accept that it's happening. Or to switch the connotation, perhaps instead of a "virus", look at it as a "disruptive innovation" - where if we act as an entrenched incumbent, we will be disrupted as our competitors rewrite the rules, and we will be too far behind to pivot successfully.

Letting the community process the new inputs vigorously might seem more traumatic in the short term but it could also make us stronger overall.

This just seems counter to the principles that I appreciate at HN.

and that ignoring the "virus" or "symptoms" will make the adjustment that much more traumatic

There are other sites to talk about politics on. Personally, I'm happy to come to HN to learn new things.

Letting the community process the new inputs vigorously might seem more traumatic in the short term but it could also make us stronger overall.

An extremely active 3000-day HN user with excellent technical contributions was recently banned due to the way they chose to express themselves regarding a political story. This made the community weaker, even if it was a necessary ban.

An extremely active 3000-day user with excellent technical contributions was recently banned due to politics.

They were banned because of what they chose to write, it wasn't just because of a political discussion.

Yeah, I reworded it. Thanks for calling that out.

Is there anywhere to read what they wrote?

It seems better to respect their privacy. HN is a public forum, but it's good not to drag a member's name through the mud. What's done is done, and there wasn't much to be learned from the exchange anyway.

What's done is done, and there wasn't much to be learned from the exchange anyway.

I don't agree. I think it's worth reading and trying to understand the perspectives of the participants. I wouldn't guess that any of them feel embarrassed by their comments. Instead, I get the feeling that everyone feels like they did what they must and the outcome matched their expectations based on the world they each perceive. I think it's instructive to review the episode and consider whether a different approach might have been able to reach a better result.

Yeah. Read the post history of the HN mods.

I was going to suggest that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sctb

I guess it is also necessary to turn on showdead in the settings.

The thread starts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13055016

Having been here roughly 8ish years, I don't think I can recall someone being banned unjustly off the top of my head. Surely I haven't seen all of the bans play out, but the ones I have seen have always come as no surprise (Like I'd probably ban the person for 24 hours myself in a lot of cases. )

I'm also concered that the timing of this can be partisan. Clearly Trump is still appointing high level cabinet members and discussing those things has merit. Yet during many of Obama's controversies, this site was allowed to chug away endlessly with an anti-Democratic, anti-Obama narrative. I think HN goes zero politics entirely or lets us continue as is. This move could be interpreted as pro-Trump especially if we're going to get the SoS announcement this week.

>Our values are fragile

No, they aren't. If your values can't handle a basic criticism then your values are terrible. HN shouldn't be creating 'safe spaces' for the status quo or the new administration. I'd rather get heckled at Hamilton than live in a society where we worry about hurting each other's values, feelings, sense of entitlements, etc. Open discourse is always the superior solution.

If harm is being done, challenge it on a one by one basis. I see some very rude tones, borderline namecalling here, and other issues that get ignored by the mods. Encourage a polite discourse, don't eliminate it. I'd also be less liberal with posting rights. New accounts shouldn't be able to post on day one. A lot of these political firestorms are via 'green' accounts who may or may not be paid shills coming here and performing deflection and reading off bulletpoints or playing up typical 'whataboutisms'. Or regulars who post the same axe grinding over and over. Sadly, this goes against the religion of 'growth hacking' where conversations and new signups are the only metric that matters.

> If your values can't handle a basic criticism then your values are terrible.

I don't think you should judge the merit of moral values by how well their proponents deal with being shouted at on the internet.

> this site was allowed to chug away endlessly with an anti-Democratic, anti-Obama narrative [...] This move could be interpreted as pro-Trump

The opposite people feel the opposite:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108689

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108834

Tech is just as political as actual politics, so this explanation that political discussion "causes harm" / "war" / "emotion over reason" strikes me as incredibly facile. And frankly the notion that software engineers need to segregate our political lives from our professional lives is unbelievably self-serving to certain interests and frankly a big problem with the culture today.

I don't think "detox" is the point of what they're trying to do, so whether it would work as detox is irrelevant.

I think they're concerned about things like community civility. Instead of the detox metaphor, imagine a community that is riled up about something, and is starting to riot - that is, to fight with itself. The authorities declare a curfew to get all sides off the streets and not fighting with each other for long enough for tempers to cool down.

Unfortunately, that analogy breaks down, because we can all go just outside the city limits (that is, to other sites than HN) and get all riled up again there, and be ready to rumble here after the curfew ends. Still, it strikes me as an experiment worth running for a week.

Do you really think that the techno-capitalist libertarian utopia that many in silicon valley seem to be trying to build is a-political, immune from regulation or popular backlash?

Anything political or critical of YC already gets disappeared from this site quite quickly. I had assumed that this policy (which always seemed misguided to me) was already in effect.

I think the historical moment we find ourselves in is a time to make ourselves more uncomfortable rather than retreat and pretend that the only things that matter are software and how we might make more money on the internet.

Politics is about coming together to find common solutions to problems and make sure that no one gets left behind. Isn't it the job of a responsible community (even a VC sponsored one dedicated to making money with tech as HN is) to lean in when things start to feel hard rather than tune out and ignore our responsibilities as citizens and fellow humans?

> Anything [...] critical of YC already gets disappeared

That's definitely not true, and we're very careful about it. It's literally the first thing pg blurted out to me, before I even had a chance to sit down, on my first morning as an HN moderator. I do my bit by blurting it to everyone else in turn.

As a frequent commenter I think this is a good experiment, but I think it's worth considering what kind of platform HN considers itself.

Technology and politics are intimately linked, even if it's not always obvious. Technology's impact on politics is only going to grow in my opinion so I think the "political" discussions - as they relate to technology - are vital for the community at large.

If we as a community are going to be "disrupters" whether intentionally or not, we need to understand and discuss the social and political landscape and impacts of our work better, so that we can implement our technology in a way that doesn't spurn backlash from the communities and thus their political leaders.

Talk about political scandals and the like don't do service to this community, so I think those topics should be sequestered. However discussions on encryption, automation etc... are perfect topics for this community in my opinion.

"Why? Political conflicts cause harm here. The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those things are lost when political emotions seize control. Our values are fragile—they're like plants that get forgotten, then trampled and scorched in combat. HN is a garden, politics is war by other means, and war and gardening don't mix."

This is so misguided and absurd. What is the definition of politics here? Trump stories? Or are fake news stories also political? Alot of the HN community came to value intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation from political ends

While I see the point, and I can agree with the points made that HN shouldn't be a "battlefield" for person opinion, I cannot accept that we will concede politics to be a topic to be too difficult for discussion, difficult conversations are the most important ones to have.

In the view you've put forward, you say that politics is the problem, a topic that when discussed causes fights and it can damage the culture of HN. I disagree. If we don't know how to talk about politics with strangers, we stop trying to persuade each other, and we bottle up our disagreement, and we go online and yell at someone else, or we vote for the candidate who screams our view... because we don't know how else to express it, to find the nuance in it, and ask ourselves hard questions. We'd rather have an opinion than not stand for something. All of the flaming is a way of expressing it...

We can suppress the conversations on HN to focus only on specific science or technology, but on a technology website in this age, and right now that seems like we'd be the website equivalent of a child covering their ears when they don't want to hear something. Blockchain tech, cryto, AI, mesh networking, job loss from automation, cyberwar, Quantum C. Seems incorrect to suggest that technology and politics can be separated easily (especially at a big picture).

Of course this is the internet, people come here to troll and fight. But we as individuals can always walk away. We can douse the flames by not engaging in it ourselves. We can always handle a conversation with care, it's not the topic that is emotional, it's us. It isn't up to the community to stop people from talking about touchy subjects, so that we all get along, it's up to us to learn how to talk about these things better. On the net, just like in the world.

The experiment shouldn't be to stop political discourse, but encourage it. See where we go, go forth and be critical thinkers and talk about the hardest topics facing human civ right now. Lets see what happens. Maybe that is naive, but we gotta start somewhere. Discouraging the conversation isn't a start, its an end.

See where we go, go forth and be critical thinkers and talk about the hardest topics facing human civ right now. Lets see what happens.

Perhaps that should be next weeks experiment!

(Yes, I'm serious.)

yea yea!

Tribalism is so toxic. I'm all for this. But for flagging purposes what's the boundary between a political/non-political story?

EDIT: @dang in another comment: Let me clarify. The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet. We're not so concerned about stories on other things that happen to have political aspects—like, say, software patents.

It would be great if dang could clarify a bit; for example, what about news about legal developments (that most likely comes with a normative slant, like welcoming or regretting something that courts have done), leaks about government institutions, or opinion pieces about social issues that don't directly associate them with politicians or legislation?

A challenge that's come up around lots of controversies is the way that one side might think something is "political", while another side thinks it's not!

> Tribalism is so toxic.

And yet isn't one solution to tribalism a respectful exchange of ideas and dialogue?

Political changes have many direct impacts on this community - net neutrality, education policy related to STEM, funding for organizations/government agencies that have a long history of supporting technology, legislation concerning the development of new technologies (particularly for the medical and energy sectors), employment legislation, patent laws, and many other topics are likely of interest to a large number of HN readers and contributors.

Personally, I don't come to HN looking for political discussion/commentary but I also don't mind seeing it when it's appropriate.

Yeah, that's well put... I could go further to propose that the respectful exchange of ideas and dialogue is the antithesis of tribalism--of othering.

I agree with you that politics are deeply intertwined with hacker culture.

But practically speaking, how we get to that respectful ideal? Throttling political stories when things get too heated might help.

Have you been witnessing respectful political exchanges on this site? the past 18 months have been pretty awful, in my experience.

Compared to other online communities - absolutely. HN rarely devolves into "Damn [liberals|conservatives]" and people often get called out here for ad hominem attacks. Political articles without any basis in technology and clickbait titles are also usually quickly culled.

I think the standard for HN political discussions ought to be other HN discussions not political discussions elsewhere on the internet. HN having better political discussions than elsewhere on the internet might even be part of the problem if HN is attracting people whose purpose is political discussions.

That's a good observation and well put.

> And yet isn't one solution to tribalism a respectful exchange of ideas and dialogue?

Yes. And HN may in fact be a good forum for doing so, if we can keep the respectful and dialogue parts.

This may not be the week for it, though. (The last two weeks haven't been so great for civil, thoughtful dialog on anything touching politics, even on HN.) If HN is going to be the place to counter political tribalism via thoughtful cross-tribe communication, it may need this week off in order to be able to get there.

They have made so that an article that cultivates discussion is actually penalized, softly silencing any topics worthy of discussion here. Now they outright ban things. Might as well just disable comment functionality if they don't like people opinions and ideas that much.

For the most part, the "they" you refer to is the community at large. By far the most flagging and down voting is community members, not the mods. And it's not "silencing topics worthy of discussion", its "avoiding topics that have empirically generated mostly uncivil, non-constructive flamewars". I've made comments expressing this distinction a number of times in response to comments such as yours (silencing/censoring worth discussion; why did this get flagged; this particular political view is always killed), and they've been consistently some of my most-up-voted comments. That indicates to me that this is an idea that has relatively strong support from the community as a whole.

The boundary for flagging is wherever you put it. Just like upvotes or downvotes or commenting.

> Tribalism is so toxic

What do you think HN will be like when only the privileged ideologies are allowed?

I am concerned that in the long run political stories about HN and Y Combinator, and about the tech scene will be excluded.

Where better to talk about the politics of HN and Y Combinator than on HN? As far as political stories go, these are the most relevant ones to HN readers. Political stories about the tech scene, and related topics (such as political reactions to tech employees grabbing up all the real estate in certain tech-heavy cities like SF) are also very relevant.

I would be more ok with the banning of non-tech-related political stories/threads. But, I think a better solution than censorship would be tagging. Tagging would allow every reader to do their own filtering, and include/exclude what they felt was appropriate, rather than have those decisions dictated top-down.

On the other hand, I also understand the desire of the site owners/admins to guide the site to be what they want it to be, rather than what its users want it to be. That's definitely their prerogative, and much of it I agree with - particularly the censorship of hate speech, flaming, and trolling.

The guiding of this site towards more tech and less politics is also a desire I understand and commiserate with. There definitely are plenty of other political sites out there, where you can argue this stuff 'till the cows come home. But personally, I don't visit those sites, and would like to be able to discuss at least some of those topics -- the ones relevant to tech and to HN/YC, on HN itself.

Agreed, tagging would be a great solution. Three cheers for tagging! Tagging for president! Oops. :)

There could be "politics" tag for stories and comments. If moderation would want it could penalize tagged content like it does with Ask HN. It can hid tagged content by default and one could enable it in profile (like Show dead).

Political discussion in many technical stories irks me, especially if it goes to the top. But I understand that it is sometimes valuable. Just like offtopic mentions of technical issues of the medium (horrible font etc.). Maybe it would be good to put it all to big bag called "offtopic" or something and put it always at the bottom of comment threads and stories list with ability to hid them in profile settings.

I am running tech site with 10k users on which i made surveys about politics with possibility to comment by users. I've stopped because there were so many conflicts, such bad emotions, then users moved their personal conflicts to other discussions on forum. After stopping the political surveys everything is a lot more stable and people are nicer to each other, without any biases, they discuss about software, hardware etc. This was very good decision, will it work for HN? Probably yes, it worked for us.

I disagree. I think if there was ever a time in the history of the world where more political discourse needs to occur, it should be now. I think this is especially true with such a smart group of individuals trying to change the world in many different arenas.

More reasoned, thoughtful, polite political discourse? Absolutely. More yelling without listening? No, the world doesn't need another platform where that happens.

The goal here is to let people get past the yelling so that we can get back to the thoughtful, polite discourse.

This feels a lot like closing the barn doors after the horses have already gotten loose. This kind of action was sorely needed weeks ago, especially when political articles turned into flame wars populated by 140 char political emotional screeds. It was really disheartening to see HN turn towards the same kind of political discussion I have to endure on other sites. Especially when commentators who tended to post thoughtfully completely devolved.

These days it feels rarer to see the same kind of inflammatory articles gain traction. The same kind of discussion is there but the flaming feels less rampant than it once was. With passions cooled I feel that the community is slowly returning to normal. Though it's likely with such a contentious president, especially to the de facto SV culture, it's not going to be smooth waters.

More brush fires might just be the new normal for now. I think that controlling the burning in this case is more advantageous to the community than trying to stamp it out entirely. Giving the silent treatment to unpopular views is partially how we ended up where we are.

I'm always up for a short term experiment though.

Barn doors and brush fires ... are you Aussie by any chance? :)

Californian I'm afraid.

> Why? Political conflicts cause harm here

Unfortunately this a consequence of people trying to shove politics everywhere, including in unrelated communities. I don't want to point fingers but a specific camp has mastered the art of forcing their political beliefs upon others in the name of "the right side of history". The result is now, you can't be just a developer, or a techie. You have to be a techie + or a developer + qnd also support a specific political agenda, or "you're not a decent human being". Maybe people should stop doing that at first place. The same thing happened in atheist communities or gaming and it permanently ruined these communities, because it forced everybody to take sides. HN is no different. The dev community will suffer the same fate if people don't come to their senses before it's too late.

Maybe political subjects that are totally unrelated to tech should be banned from HN. I don't like censorship, but if the goal is to keep a community united and focused well, I'm open for alternative suggestions...

Maybe political subjects that are totally unrelated to tech should be banned from HN.

A strict reading of the guidelines would suggest that they already are. There's nothing interesting or gratifying in those discussions. They devolve into poo-flinging with a probability approaching 1.

In my experience, obvious political flamebait gets flagged off the frontpage out what feels like sheer exasperation. Comments not so much, but they generally end up a few shades lighter.

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.

> It's worth nothing

This seems to be a typo, but I'm not positive, so I thought I'd mention it.

Yes, it was a typo. Fixed.

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 some other compromise so that proper comment flagging is more widespread.

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.

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 whenever I go near a political discussion.

No more politics for me (at least till I am ready to come out of my self imposed exile).

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?

I am more of a lurker than a poster. I just read comments on the sites.

I really believe that people on either side of the political spectrum should at the very least listen to the view points espoused by the other side so that they can get out of their own echo chambers.

Its a real eye opener to know that there are more than one opinion/point of view on a topic.

Here I go again....finger in ear..."la la la la..."

I'm in that boat too. I've turned off Twitter and have with rare exception stayed away from news sites. Headphones go on whenever I hear a political discussion near me.

Not sure I can keep this up for 4 years, but I'll give it a go.

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.

I think this is a bad idea, even as an experiment. Treating groups of ideas as off-limits, immutable or in need of protection from other groups does more harm than good. Your analogy of "politics [being] war by other means" is exactly why we should foster political discussion just as any other intellectual pursuit. Arbitrary isolation between the political or religious self and our intellectual self is, I believe, why politics is so violent and difficult to talk about. You don't need homogeneity for a good discussion and you shouldn't assume chaos when heterogenous people start talking.

We talk about important things here and should do so in a way that is conducive to engaging conversation. Topics shouldn't be off the table.

Also, what is 'political'?

Edit: typo

Thank you, I'll happily flag down politics on HN.

Politics has caused me to start using new software so I can filter Twitter, change my subreddits, and aggressively unfollow people on Facebook (even family at this point).

And still I can't avoid it... though perhaps for the best, since social media by-and-large is just a distraction from real work and real life. I'm far better off coding, reading books, and playing go than reading garbage political news nd opinions from shrill internet denizens.

Not caring is the default state.

I'm a little skeptical of this.... What's the ulterior motive here? We all know SamA was very anti-trump, is this an alternative method to keep the new US political regime from affecting YC? It's almost a weird form of discussion censorship. Whose idea was this?

> We all know SamA was very anti-trump

Who is SamA?

Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator.

And another partner is a member of the presidential transition team...

Thiel is not actually a partner or employee of Y Combinator. http://www.ycombinator.com/people/

Actually he was, until as recently as a month before the Elections.

https://medium.com/projectinclude/peter-thiel-yc-and-hard-de...

> But Thiel’s actions are in direct conflict with our values at Project Include. Because of his continued connection to YC, we are compelled to break off our relationship with YC. =Ellen Pao

He's the president of ycombinator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman

oh ok. Thanks.

It was my idea and has nothing to do with political preferences, though the election season was probably a factor.

It has to do with us noticing an uptick in two undesirable things: harsh ideological comments, and accounts that use HN primarily for political battle.

You can see one example of how the idea developed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052458

Do you have real data showing that there has been an uptick in those two things (however you've defined them), or is it possible that the apparent uptick is caused by something else, like confirmation bias or your own weariness of recent political discussion/events?

Interesting, I have noticed the change in discussion but a ban seems a swing too far in the other direction, but it also no go unfettered. I guess we'll see how it goes. I'd like to see what gets defined as being 'political'. To play devils advocate there are several YC backed companies that lobby and contribute to politicians.

I think defining political is going to be tricky. For example, is a discussion about fake news vs censorship political? Is the answer different if we are talking about China vs the US? What about discussing a company that provides fake news detection as service?

It wouldn't necessarily surprise me to learn that my account is one of those latter, although it would disappoint me a little and cause me to question my approach, since "battle" really isn't a good characterization of what I'm after here.

One of the things I've found most impressive about HN, in fact, is the fashion in which people disposed across the full width of the US political spectrum seem able here to discuss potentially divisive subjects in a civil and perhaps even constructive fashion - I can't speak for anyone else, but I can say that comments here have given me pause for thought, and on occasion to significantly reconsider opinions that I've held - not all of which I still do. This isn't to say that I'm politically progressive or at all likely to become so, but I have found uniquely valuable some of the political discussion which has occurred on HN, and the degree of dispassionate consideration and tenor of general civility I've seen in such discussions here are unique in my experience.

The point I raise isn't that I think the "political detox week" is a bad idea. (Or a good one - time will tell.) But I do think it would be a shame if political discussion were banned or severely curtailed on HN in future. Such a decision seems to me as though it could only be a deliberate effort to invoke the "echo chamber" effect which has redounded to such cost throughout US politics in recent years and especially in recent months. That's something I've seen happening to a broad extent on both ends of the political spectrum lately, and especially since the election. No one on either side seems willing to hear anything from anyone on the other - except here, and I think there's value in that.

Perhaps I'm alone, or nearly so, in this opinion. But perhaps I'm not, too. And even if I am, it still seems worth throwing out there. In an increasingly polarized political environment (and I say this as a veteran of the 2000 election and all that followed it!), HN seems as close as anything I've participated in, seen, or heard of, to a demilitarized zone where parties on both sides can meet and interact in something approaching a constructive fashion. I realize that's not HN's intended purpose, and I don't blame the mods here if they decide that's not what they want to run. But I do think it's something that'd be a shame to lose.

Hear, hear! I came to HN specifically to check comments on political news items, because I (generally) found them pretty insightful and excellent.

With respect, technology is at the nexus of politics now, like it or not. What possible case can be made that questions of technology are not, as of now, central to the debate on many political fronts? Should we not be leading the charge for robust and informed discussions of the role of technology in the political sphere? If not us then who?

>It has to do with us noticing an uptick in two undesirable things: harsh ideological comments, and accounts that use HN primarily for political battle.

That's straightforward, and understandable.

Personally, though, I would want to measure that in some way. We all tend to notice harsh comments or politicized accounts when they are in opposition to our world view. Ones that we agree with might fly under the radar.

Step 1: Identify Problem

Step 2: Figure out a way to Avoid Problem

Step 3: Attain Nirvana

It's amazing how quickly examples of the problem dang specifically mentioned have popped up, like this comment.

Assuming bad faith without evidence is a big part of the issue here.

Im not assuming bad faith, just said I was skeptical. YC is a business and they are very interested in making money. Since the CEO of YC was very outspoken against one political candidate and now there is a week long ban I was just curious. Ive always seem YC as very open to intelligent honest discussion, so a ban like this seemed odd to me. That's why I asked the question, I probably could have phrased it better.

Asking "what's the ulterior motive" is assuming bad faith. It is equivalent to accusing someone of lying.

Not as much lying as having a hidden reason, and I think companies that who are very interested in profits more often than not have ulterior motives with the decisions they make. I wanted to bring it up for discussion, I find it very odd for HN to have a 'temporary ban' on a topic that is topically relevant and important to how the world works.

I completely understand why you brought it up, I'm just trying to explain that you were and are still assuming bad faith.

From my perspective, this is not very odd because HN is not a general purpose message board. The guidelines have always outlined what is on and off topic, and politics has always been considered off topic. It seems like a very reasonable experiment.

> Im not assuming bad faith

You specifically asked "What's the ulterior motive here?" which implies you think there is an ulterior motive. An ulterior motive would be acting in bad faith, since it would by definition be different than the expressed motive, since the reasoning was clearly expressed above.

Presentation matters. Whether you meant it to be or not, your statement is somewhat inflammatory, for the reasons I just outlined. In my opinion, it's also a very good reason why the temporary ban is a good idea.

I don't believe bad faith as being the same as having ulterior motive, but we'd just be arguing semantics at that point. It'd be the same as assuming temporary ban = temporary censorship.

> I don't believe bad faith as being the same as having ulterior motive

I was very specific to outline an additional condition which I think makes all the difference, which is that you were presented with the reason for the action. Assuming an ulterior motive when you've already been given an explicit motive is assuming they are acting in bad faith, and that that they've provided a reason that does not match reality.

Just because someone tells you the truth, it doesn't mean they are telling you the whole truth. I find this especially applicable in business. Companies the size and value of YC, I can easily see how we might get half the story sometimes. That was the basis of my question, I was skeptical about the reason dang gave hence the question.

You didn't question if there was an ulterior motive, you asked what it was. That's begging the question[1]. It's similar (in type, if not extremity) to asking "Have you beat your wife again?" Note how the question presupposes the person has beat their wife already. Your statement presupposes there is an ulterior motive, rather than asking if there is one. There is a distinct difference in the statements "Is there an ulterior motive?" and "What is the ulterior motive?". You may not have intended this, which is why my first reply specifically addressed that it may have been unintentional.

> I was skeptical about the reason dang

As to this, I'm not sure I have the same skepticism you do in this regard. HN has a history of flagging overly political stories, as it can often be hard to keep discussion civil. There seems to be less flagging of these as the election gets close, as it's more relevant to everyone involved, but trying to cut back after the election is past seems appropriate to me.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

But I don't even have a wife! Joking aside, we're arguing narratives and semantics. I do see your point and very early on admitted I could have phrased it better, I still stand by my original questions.

> There seems to be less flagging of these as the election gets close, as it's more relevant to everyone involved, but trying to cut back after the election is past seems appropriate to me.

I go back and forth on this one for a few reasons. Political diatribes are irritating and usually fruitless, but this is a very different election (and so far post election). The mere fact that the president-elect wants to increase tariffs, limit H1B visas, penalize moving business off-shore is very pertinent to the tech industry, so I think discussion on those topics are 'fair game' in the HN-sphere of discussion. In one hand I see what dang is trying to accomplish, at least I think I do, by making comments on HN less sharp and more tolerable/friendly, but in the other hand for the most part HN users have intelligent, useful conversations and as long as there is civil discussion a ban seems unnecessary.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter, but if there is an ulterior motive I'd be more comfortable knowing that it exists and why it exists... it's always helpful to 'know your audience'. I didnt mean to be accusatory in any manner, more just curious.

I think the HN guidelines have always discouraged politics, so this isn't exactly new. I'm guessing the mods have gotten a lot of complaints about the volume of what many people see as off-topic submissions and discussions.

> 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.

This is a site for computer science and entrepreneurship, right? Over the past few months I've seen a lot of posts unrelated to those two topics and it seems like Reddit is very much bleeding into here, not just politics.

My opinion is that this place is great for two reasons: It's narrow focus on one topic, and a userbase that consists of experts in that one topic. When Hacker News strays from it's area of expertise I feel that Gell-Mann Amnesia is apparent and the quality of discussion much lower. Again not just for the politics but for other random news as well.

This is a site for "hackers", which is an intentionally vague term, and it's not supposed to be limited to just CS and startups, although that's obviously the main audience.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> 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.

It's just one lousy week. Is this a critical week politically speaking?

My understanding is that sama does not run HN. I believe when things were restructured, HN became dang's baby.

Hallelujah.

My 2 cents: unless it's directly related to tech (net neutrality, SOPA, surveillance, security, etc), it shouldn't be on here.

I say make this permanent. A couple of years ago, politics was mostly verboten here, at least unofficially. It's been a slow, steady transition to the current state where political stories have become so prominent.

None of that is to say that politics isn't important, or that I don't enjoy discussing the subject. It just isn't mainly why I come to HN, and I honestly feel a little dirty every time I get drawn into a political discussion here.

The BIG wave of identity politics started circa 2011 ... it was easier to be forbidden before that. It is easier to stop a tide than a Katrina.

HN can't be immune from macro trends.

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.

I have no complaints. This is where I come more and more often because I am so fed up with endless political bickering on Facebook, Twitter, and, well, pretty much every other place I go that has some sort of comment section or forum. It's frustrating. For me, this is the last bastion of rational discussion.

It's your prerogative to enforce HN's own rules about political posts, but I think identifying "politics" as a "topic" is a misguided (political) gesture.

It's one thing to say pogo sticks are off-topic in a unicycling forum, and quite another to say basic human drives (thought, sex, hunger, curiosity, creation, expression, socializing, prediction, story-telling, bonding, power, respect, exploration...) that pervade everything we do are "off-topic".

On the road to pathologizing and demonizing people who don't agree with us, this kind of compartmentalization is itself a mechanism we use to flatten and stereotype away the human needs, desires, and drives that animate others.

You may benefit HN (and society) more by acknowledging these entanglements and focusing instead on how to model, shape, and cultivate responsible civic discourse.

Politics stories seem to get flagkilled 95% of the time already, and despite the difficulty of discussing it politics affects our daily lives a lot more than the latest release of some javascript framework.

There are different forums for politics though... I think the point Dang is making is that this place isn't primarily (even tangentially) a place for politics.

Evidently a large subset of the user base disagrees.

It seems that a majority (though not a huge majority) of the commenters do. But if you consider that plenty of the 600 users who posted comments also support the idea, and factor in the 1400+ upvotes on the submission (which tend to be expressions of approval), it's likely that community feedback is between moderately and highly positive. Though you wouldn't guess it from reading the thread.

Those who favor prohibiting political discourse are only mildly in favor -- even if it's allowed on the site, they can simply ignore any threads with political content and approximate the same effect in terms of user experience. They are thus less likely to bother writing, since it doesn't make as much difference to them.

Those who favor allowing political discourse, however, are angry, since there is no substitute, other way to approximate "discussing politics with the HN community" other than doing so on the HN site.

I like the idea of it being a detox and nothing more. I understand that political discussions can drag a site down, just look at reddit, but in the long term ignoring everything political can only hurt us. When it comes to topics like net neutrality, environment, and security/encryption, we can be doing the job of the government itself by crippling our grassroots/discussion efforts.

Being aware of the government stepping in our gardens is important, and if the side effect is sometimes we get mad at eachother, well, at least we're aware.

No objection whatsoever to a pause period, but it's important for people to realize there's no separation between politics and anything else, including technology. "Everything is political" is a cliche, but it happens to be true.

"Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone." -RMS

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?

The beauty (in my eyes at least) of Hacker News has always been that the most interesting/relevant stories and discussions find their way to the top of the feed. I've discovered topics and perspectives (including those I disagree with) that I otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to if it weren't for HN. I've always felt there is something of a built-in filter present, so this move feels a little forced and unnecessary to me.

It sounds like you may not be seeing the worst of the threads we're talking about, which tend not to remain on the front page but burn like tire fires anyway.

That's entirely possible and a fair point.

I support this even permanently. Not everything is political as some people believe.

Hackernews articles and comments about flask, django, and mongo helped me get my first job. Ask hn helped me learn about consulting. I love reading the comments about the em drive to help me understand when the mainstream media doesnt explain or misrepresents.

Even today I still learn so much about js frameworks, and cool plugins or tips and tricks, seeing all this swamped by politics sucks.

While I agree with the idea, HN as a whole cannot totally avoid these kinds of issues: "Tech Companies Delay Diversity Reports to Rethink Goals". I haven't posted the link because it's not in the spirit of the detox and it's only one week. Do we avoid these types of discussions because they are ambiguous and hard?

  "Fashion is mistaken for good design; 
   moral fashion is mistaken for good."

I understand the re-calibration of HN here. The choice of topics drift over periods of time and a reminder of the rationale is good hygiene.

   "Moral fashions more often seem to be 
    created deliberately. When there's 
    something we can't say, it's often 
    because some group doesn't want us to."

I'm also reminded of a great essay [0] that for today should be mandatory reading.

[0] "What you can't Say" ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

This doesn't feel nonpartisan, it feels like it's actively quashing what little political traction can be gained here.

And frankly, a 'detox' is absolutely the wrong word for it. The emotions for me at least come from feeling scared. I have several family members who will lose coverage if the ACA is repealed and I have muslim friends who are looking at the prospect of being sent to interment camps.

This is anger and fear that should be cultivated, not extinguished.

  sudo bash -c 'echo "127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com" >> /etc/hosts'

Yes, "taking a break from politics" is a privilege granted to those not directly effected by it.

This is probably a good reason why political discussions aren't worthwhile on HN right now. All those terrifying prospects like Muslim internment camps and millions dying from lack of health coverage are completely in the realm of speculation right now (if not outright falsehood - I've been seeing a lot of scary, widely-believed fakes out there). Without any kind of factual specifics to ground the argument in, it just turns into an increasingly nasty faith-based fight between people who believe that this will never happen and those who disagree are maliciously fearmongering, and those who believe it's obviously going to happen and anyone who disagrees is an evil mass-murder-supporting Nazi. Neither side can prove the other wrong.

Realize that the other half of the country is also scared. They too have anger (at ACA not being repealed yet) and fear (that muslims probably won't be interned) and they too want this cultivated, not extinguished.

They want political traction too.

I come here to talk and learn about tech and science, not banter about politics. I'm all for a politic-free HN.

Find just about any article on the hacker mindset and politics, aside from the desire for freedom, won't be anywhere near the top of the list. Nothing about Republicans, Democrats, race, etc.

Some examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28subculture%29 http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://suntzu23.blogspot.com/2006/11/five-principles-of-hack... https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-hack.html

"Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me, I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to decide, All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you."

Information/Internet technology is inseparable from politics now. I never asked for that and neither did any of us, but that's the inescapable reality. Our inventions are being used to both enhance and disrupt democracy, and they are causing real people real pain along with the huge benefits to millions of others. Like many, my own productivity has taken a huge hit in the last year because of all of the political news. I resent this in the same way I'd resent a hurricane hitting my house, but pretending it isn't happening won't help. HN being a blend of pure tech stories along with political+tech stories is absolutely the right blend because IT REFLECTS THE REALITY OF TODAY'S WORLD. Trump's election is the biggest change in politics in the last 50 years, and IT was at the heart of that election, in terms of the forces that have caused the desire for change (e.g. worker displacement, cultural upheaval), and the mechanics of the election itself (e.g. Twitter, news feeds, fake news, media manipulation, big data, etc.). We, the IT workers of the world, are the new weapons-makers. That we never meant our work to be used that way is immaterial. Everybody in tech should now be politically informed. We should be tuned in. We should know details. We should learn the facts. I'd love to spend 100% of my time learning about new frameworks and hardware, and that's what I enjoy doing. We have the ring now, even if we never wanted it. Now it's our job to keep it out of hands of evil.

P.S. I started writing this response with, "Good! I am so sick of reading about politics everywhere. Great move, HN!". Then I changed my response to the one above.

We all share a responsibility to behave like adults. Is this really the way to deal with some people being quick to anger? What's the difference between people debating over the best political theory vs, say, unproven quantum theory, or lay speculation on economics, or on history, or on aesthetics, or on evolutionary post hoc rationalization, or on predictions of the future?

And as per the US-centrism aspect, personally, I can't see how muting political debate will shift the average discussion away from US-centric politics, in general..

That will give us all more time to discuss religion (the other topic my parents always said was verboten between casual acquaintances).

More seriously, I'm not going to rock the boat (and won't miss the discussions about politics) but I always figured those stories would disappear from the front page when the community at large didn't want to discuss them. It's a dangerous slope since you can also make the argument that other topics are also too dominant. I personally would like to see fewer articles on Angular but I wouldn't have suggested that they be off-topic for a week. I guess I assumed the up-voters wanted them.

OFF-TOPIC: Any chance we can down-vote articles with enough karma?

EDIT: I guess I should also note that I rarely flag articles since that seems like it should be reserved for some sort of abuse. My thought about down-votes is that it's the opposite of an up-vote ("I'm not interested in this" versus "this is interesting").

Tricky thing about politics is that - as dang explained - triggers specific reactions in all of us, in a self-amplifying way. So while I often do comment on political topics, I also like this experiment very much. Politics will never disappear from HN completely, but what I desire is for the occasional political discussion on HN to be of high quality - both civil and insightful. So I 100% support this experiment.

I've been hesitant to go into new and just start flagging all the terrible stories because I've read about people that lost the ability to flag. So I only flag on relatively rare occasion. Does such an overuse mechanism actually exist?

Yeah, I lost it once for about.. a year? Maybe more? It just came back one day.

Not overuse, just abuse. If you'd like to flag some more but are worried about that, just send us an email at hn@ycombinator.com and we'd be thrilled to take a look and give some feedback.

I don't know how automated the system is, but would it be feasible to say something like "If your email address is in your profile, we'll try to give you a warning by email before we take action?" As it is, there's not much feedback on whether the flagging action is appropriate or not.

As someone who is a regular (permanent?) attender on HN's rate limit blacklist[0], I can say that from personal experience: You will likely not be notified before HN punishes you, but from contacting HN about said incidents, it's generally (maybe always?) a manual process by an irritated HN mod. And if you email them (hn@ycombinator.com) about your apparent ban, they're generally willing to converse.

[0]I was unable to post this comment when I wrote it, and had to wait.

Just passing by this thread to register intense negativity against this plan. HN shouldn't be a "safe space".

Shutting down discussion of "politics"-- the methodology of distribution of resources within a society-- is the complete opposite of gratifying intellectual curiosity and having substantive comments. How is it possible to gratify curiosity, when you're not allowed to start the discussion? How can the substance of your comments be displayed when the topic is verboten? Perhaps what dang is upset about is the tone with which these comments are conducted. Sure, they're shrill, sometimes. But isn't it natural to be shrill when discussing issues of morality and heavy consequence?

As far as HN not being intended for use as a political or ideological battlefield: that dream is dead. Technology touches every aspect of humankind, and yes, that means it's political.

Politics was definitely a problem right after the election, but it seems to have calmed down a lot and nakedly political stories don't seem to make it to the front page anymore.

I would hope this purge would not include stories related to privacy legislation, as I think the topic is very relevant to the community.

Some of the most politically important events and eras were defined and made possible by the technology and engineering that came out of these periods. In the past, engineering has been taught as a separate entity, focusing on monetary and technological risks/rewards. This leads to impressive engineering projects that sometimes devastate communities, wildlife, marginalized groups, etc.

But the truth is that engineering is intrinsically linked to the impacts it has on the environment, its social impacts, its political impacts, and everything else that it affects in this complex web that is reality. When engineering is taught in schools now, these impacts are a major focus. In civil engineering this means that projects are planned that at least take into account the people and communities they are displacing. In industrial engineering, it means sourcing materials from the right places, focusing on environmental impact, etc.

It's absolutely no different in software engineering, or high tech in general. By enforcing an 'apolitical' atmosphere in a tech discussion, you're consciously shifting the intelligence and nuance of the discussion back to a period before we started to consider the impact that technology has on society. This is a dangerous shift, and dumbs down the level of discussion that's achievable by muting voices that connect the discussion with its impacts in other areas. In effect, this actively enforces the status quo, and doesn't allow our discussion here to progress the industry as a whole.

I come to HN because it's a great resource to find interesting tech articles. It's also a great way to stay informed with the latest tech related news. But equally, I find discussion so engaging here because it seems to be so deeply ingrained the heart of the tech community, and because of that, can affect the way the tech world operates as a whole (even just slightly). Stripping down the discussion to a frankly old-fashioned apolitical "tech doesn't affect anything except tech" would be a sad thing for me to witness happen to HN.

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.

Very true, high emotions preclude clear thinking and this week will be a worthwhile experiment. But unfortunately web technologies are at the core of recent political events making this a very hard problem. For example will discussion on the following topics be disallowed for the week?

-Discussions of intrusions into US infrastructure by Russia which, curiously, always engender enormous political controversy.

-Manipulation of social media for political ends both manual and automated.

-Policy changes on net neutrality proposed by the president elect or others.

-Governmental surveillance as is and as likely to evolve.

-Trolling as a political tool to disrupt opposing communities.

One level up, there is also the possibility that calm well informed discussion is the exact thing that is targeted for destruction. But perhaps this week's experiment will take some steps towards thinking about that.

If the result of political articles is a break down in polite, thoughtful discourse, such so that the site operators feel the need to take such drastic action, then we as users should also consider how we are voting comments.

I've recently realised I was upvoting comments (across various sites) that I agreed with and sometimes vice-versa, and I have started making a concrete effort to ensure that I upvote views I disagree with, if they add to the discussion.

I agree with the proposal of a one-week political moratorium here because I think that experiments can make good science. Let's also try to change the way we vote (and comment) for a week, by trying to ensure quality discourse is promoted, not just our views.

It's sometimes good for the soul to respect what you disagree with.

How do you draw boundaries of what's political? Everything is political - rules for how and where Cars can drive, rules for who can host whom in their house, gender equality and the job market, drones, and accountability abroad, encryption and government surveillance. It's impossible to have a conversation about Uber, AirBnB, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Twitter without talking about whom it affects and how.

Of course, from a broader perspective everything is political, but not necessarily party-political. That's a partisan minefield, and the degeneration of public discourse means that it's a very shallow muddy pool these days. But we have to start talking about things beyond election cycles, like how everyone can live dignified lives when automation really starts biting.

How broadly are we defining "politics" here? Some topics I see here frequently...are these flaggable for the week?

Uber Contractor vs Employee, AirBnb vs Zoning Laws, Universal Basic Income, Privacy Issues

Yeah, I think there's definitely things that seem overtly political "politician/organization/nation X did Y" and "this tech affects public via Z"

What counts as political? My only real concern is that this is pretty vaguely specified. E.g can we discuss net neutrality? The economy? Economics in general? Professional licensing requirements? Arbitration agreements? All of these have produced interesting discussions in the past, and, while I could stand to go a week without, I'd hate to ding someone's account for posting them.

This supposes that legimitately intellectual and civil political discourse is simply not possible, that some sort of "primitive brain" must always take over in any political discussion. This is empirically false. Hacker News generates much more calm and rational political discourse than otherwise.

Of course people sometimes get angry and flame each other in political threads. That should be flagged. For that matter, people flame each other on "Technology A versus Technology B" threads all the time, too, and many other topics.

The way to promote more civil political discourse is to promote more civil political discourse, not to ban political discourse as a dirty, taboo topic altogether.

I think it is based on empirical volume of comments and shifts in discourse, not a belief that civil political discourse is impossible a priori.

While I don't general like censorship... I think this is great. I don't come to this forum for political discussions. I come here to here interesting stories from like minded scientists and inquisitive people. Politics is incredibly divisive and very rarely results in intriguing conversations, more usually name calling and flaming. Nice bold move from HN Mods.

I approve, politics tends to be US centric on HN and whilst I like to keep informed there are plenty of other dedicate sources for that sort of information. Also as this isn't a politics site inevitably the debate is a bit of an echo chamber.

This is a great idea. I assumed that political discussion would die down a bit after the election, but it only seems to have escalated. Detox is the right word for what is needed.

I just wanted to say that I'm incredibly disappointed in this decision and even more so by its rationale.

The idea that Hacker News or tech in general is a 'garden' which should exist separately from politics is simply naive and very privileged. Taking no position, or worse suppressing opposition is itself a position. This is a critical time of political organization and resistance in the days before the Trump administration takes control.

Even 7 days lost in this process, allowing the readers of this site to ignore the reality outside their doorstep is a concrete injury to the disadvantaged communities which will be targeted in the first weeks of the Trump administration.

Discussing politics is truly a bit of a black hole - we have unlimited ability to argue for our principles but the truth is that if the sides are relatively secure in their positions and have data they trust to back it up there is no point in discussing further.

I applaud the admins for attempting something like this - communities need to develop strong opinions to survive, or else they will be torn apart by infighting when it becomes big enough that people no longer assume goodwill. This creates an ever-more toxic environment and poisons the well. At least then people are making a conscious choice to agree or disagree with the purpose/opinions of the community.

... war and gardening don't mix.

Well, victory gardens were a thing not very long ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

These probably weren't planted in the Somme.

No, they were more like a morale booster to give those at home something to do.

But during WWII in Finland there were definitely gardens built by soldiers. As the Soviet Union defended against Germany and its Finnish front was effectively paused, the Finnish soldiers began to build temporary houses on the front lines. Here's a photo from 1943:

http://www.nautelankoski.net/sota/kuvat/sotakuvat/jatkosotak...

What exactly defines a story as political?

Some recent topics I can think of... Facebook + fake news is about technology and user behavior, and also very political. Government use of surveillance technology is both technological and political in nature. Role of social media in elections has technological, sociological, politic aspects to it that can be discussed.

To me, being "political" is both what you're talking about, and how you're talking about it.

I enjoy reading what the HN audience has to say about the above examples. I'd be disappointed if they're considered too political and off limits going forward.

Interested to see how this experiment goes.

I am disappointed by this decision, but I don't love HN any less for it.

Many comments have pointed out that there are plenty of places on the web to have discussions about political topics, so let's keep the HN about tech.

I see the merit in this sentiment, but for me reading the political discussions within this community is something I value greatly. For one thing, there are a great many non-US based people here. In my experience I have been exposed to a relatively balanced set of perspectives, and generally commenters are thoughtful and un-troll-like.

In short, I learn many things from other folks in this community, and that includes political topics.

"Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone."

-- RMS, "O'Reilly Open Source Conference: Day 3" by Paul Weinstein, in Apache Week (26 July 2002)

> Those things are lost when political emotions seize control

> but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain.

Wait, is the entire premise behind this the idea that political differences can't be discussed in a respectful manner? History would disagree with you on this statement. People are capable of having political discussion without having a flame war, it happens all the time. You're taking the actions of a minority group and saying that because a few people are disrespectful we all have to bury our heads in the sand and avoid politics completely.

This is ridiculous.

I think "at the moment, politics is considerably less likely to be discussed in a respectful manner" is a very defensible point, though...

Perhaps, but just because something is difficult doesn't mean it should be completely disengaged. It's when things are difficult that issues need to be discussed the most. Instead, we should continue to engage and be more adamant about enforcing our own rules.

Thank you very much for attempting this experiment.

Notwithstanding the enormous influence the U.S. has on the world, as someone living in another country, I welcome this very much. In my opinion, HN shines when it comes to discussions of technology, it does an ok job when it comes to discussing scientific topics, but it tends to break out into parochial cliques (with full cultural blinders on) when discussing topics like politics. This is worst (again, imo) when this happens in comments on other topics; when it is the main topic, at least one can easily avoid it.

This is the time for making ourselves uncomfortable and leaving room for others to speak.

It's dangerous to avoid short-term pain by stifling conflict. HN is about technology news and I don't think we should separate the "oh cool" part from the "how will this affect our neighbors" part.

Technologists have above average wealth, and have influence on the future of technology and society. There are many here. At some point the size and power of a news site increases beyond the point where its just a toy - like it or not (see Facebook).

And with power comes responsibility.

I can understand adjusting the amount of political discussion, but banning it seems like a derogation of responsibility - certainly if the ban were to persist.

Alternatively, if another leak like Snowden's comes out this week, would discussion be prohibited? What if a big tech company was found to be building a Muslim registry? Could you please clarify whether stories that are both technology and political will remain?

> What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive comments.

If that's the clear extent of the mission, that's a pity.

I'd argue there was always a subtext on HN, whereby hackers giving prominence to their intellectual curiosity is justified because this path also eventually produces Good Stuff, technology which solves real problems, and eventually creates wealth and makes people's lives better. I would thus recommend against drawing a bright line around 'gratify intellectual curiosity'.

If we're just clicking stories purely because it gratifies us, how's it different to just eating candy? It'd be a pity if that was all the community is intended to be.

Dear lord yes.

I've been off Facebook for most of the year, and have noticed how many people have dropped Facebook like a rock after the election.

I have to wonder if their stats are going to suffer as a result.

I have almost zero interest in politics. I can think of one politically-framed piece I posted recently because of the GIS content and it was flagged to death promptly. I wish I could have found a non political write up of the project, which I believe predated the political situation that the article spun it around. Perhaps I shall look a little harder today to see if such a thing exists.

I am totally cool with this experiment. It is hard enough to foster good discussion online even without politics.

Best.

As promised, here is the GIS related works I posted a couple of weeks back, though I had to brew my own to get a piece without the political angle:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110904

What is the limit that defines "politics" from everything else ? I personally believe that (more or less) "everything is politics", therefore it is quite difficult to follow this directive.

Actually, the OP is very politic, as it is about how HN is governed, should we flag this post and should you kill the story?

This may sound pedantic, but the example shows the importance of defining what you consider is the limit between "politics" and "everything else"

To toe the line between censorship and curation is an incredibly difficult task and I think, as a civilization, it's a fundamental problem. The thought and care and effort that's going into this problem right now is deeply important and I'm grateful towards those who take it seriously, and it's clear that dang (and other HN moderators) are of this class of people.

So my only piece of (hopefully) constructive criticism is that I think there's a prima facie less biased stance to take with an announcement like this. It might go like:

Dear HN,

HN, as a public discussion forum, is a dynamical system that's always "attempting" to spiral out of control. Hence, we have moderators. Our moderators can only inject so much stabilizing energy into HN, and we've noticed that many or most political discussions are more energized than we can handle. So, we're going to see what HN looks like from a moderator's POV when we disable political discussions.

I guess this too sounds a little alarming, but my point is that I think there could be a way to talk about the issue at hand in terms of pure magnitudes instead of using language that says anything qualitative about different types of discussions. Something about the idea that "we have certain values, these discussions aren't aligned with our values, these discussions don't belong here" is a little off-putting.

All that said, it's not at all ridiculous to test whether or not banning political debate may in fact make HN a more robust and effective knowledge hub. Hopefully this experiment will yield interesting results.

That's really good, and I wish we'd consulted you beforehand.

"Well-kept gardens die by pacifism" http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/

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 and articles. A huge downvote from me.

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" who happen to almost entirely belong to a single political party.

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

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

To my point though, couldn't any topic in the world be linked back to politics one way or another? I could understand if the guidelines were don't talk about political parties, politicians, policy, etc. However having a blanket "no political topics" opens the door to flag anything

If I post about the rising cost of computers, is that political since costs could be influenced by tariffs or gov policy?

I've always felt the HN community as a whole was respectful to political points and now seeing this be censored is a bit of a downer.

Yes, a great many commenters made the same point, and I agree with it. Still, some topics are clearly more political than others, and our concern is the ones that lead to flamewars that threaten the values of this site.

"Censored" is one of those words that mean so many different things it becomes hard to communicate with them. Use it if you like, but don't forget we're talking about just a one-week breather from politics. Or let's say "most politics" if the imprecision there is bothersome.

Really appreciate you taking the time to answer all of these comments & concerns. Guess it's time now to sit back and see where this takes us

I do see what you're saying however, climate change is not a political topic in itself. It is a scientific topic that has to do with the world getting warmer.

The article was not "how to argue with people you disagree with" but how to connect with an audience who does not believe in a scientific consensus due to misinformation. In fact the point of the article had nothing to do with arguing (or political parties), but rather empathetically connecting with an opposing viewpoint.

This is exactly what I meant from my parent comment. Because a topic has been hijacked by political parties we can't bring it up? Climate change = science topic. It is a well documented phenomenon that 97% of the world's climate scientists agree on [1].

Being on either side of the political spectrum is irrelevant here, as at its core this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with science.

[1] http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

I sympathize with the sentiment you express here. In some ideal world where people are purely rational beings this might be the case. However, that's not the world we live in, and empirically has not been the case here on HN. You can see that on any climate change thread (at least any I've seen here). You mention in another comment that anything can be eventually connected to politics. I agree. And unfortunately some members will always make that connection rather than fighting against it to have a civil, constructive discussion. There are plenty of interesting topics that don't slip as easily into inflammatory political back-and-forth. Avoiding those that do seems prudent and which is what the HN guidelines explicitly state. And that's what the detox week is trying to reinforce.

Abortion can be categorized as a medical issue, I suppose. And perhaps even polling data or accuracy can be thrown in as statistics. This is a fuzzy line, which is compounded by the notion that members of political parties generally argue that their view is fact rather than opinion.

When you consider HN submission rules, it does indicate "more than just hacking or startups" and things that "gratify intellectual curiosity" are in, but also that politics is generally off-topic. On a topic like this that toes the line, you probably should assume it's further off-topic than on.

The very nature of an article that is about how to talk to someone with an opposing viewpoint isn't satisfying an intellectual curiosity, but positioning someone to persuade others. Whether you phrase it as "connecting with an audience" or not, it's inherently about an argument, and how to win it.

I would argue that a discussion of new facts or research uncovered about climate change is a submission about science, and anything specifically about "climate change deniers" is politics, or at best, "argument".

I wasn't aware there is a problem.

I also don't think it's a problem (although now I'm wondering if I missed something DAPL related yesterday), but I welcome the experiment.

The threads which dang moderates are a good chronicle of political discussions gone bad: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

I am all for experiments, and I think this is a good thing to do for a week.

Long term, politics is inseperable from many other issues, so I suspect this isn't a viable long-term rule. However, insisting on thoughtful discussion may be easier after some "detox".

I for one certainly miss the functional programming articles that used to be so much more common on the front page. Here's hoping for a week of new and non-political food for thought!

Hey Dan,

This seems like a dramatically misguided attempt to rectify conversational tone.

You can't de-program or disregard people's politics, it's shot throughout everything. Politics frame the foundational approach to recommending policy, how we make decisions and the stories and topics we care about.

It's important to find common ground and ways to discuss topics in spite of politics, not deny the fact that politics pervades everything.

I get what you are doing - HN has been in eternal September mode for a while now. I'm not sure it will work but I hope it does I don't want to have to find a new message board.

My question is what counts as political? HN has been an important place for me to get news about censorship, surveillance and copyright issues that are just not covered by my country's press (UK). I would be sad to lose this news source.

This is just for a week, so you're unlikely to lose much, and those topics aren't going to disappear from HN.

Thank you for addressing my concerns. I hope that you don't end up having to ban all political discussion permanently.

We're not going to.

I appreciate this effort and get the gist of the experiment. At the risk of being too philosophical, I'd just say, everything is inherently political, so drawing a line may prove to be tough in some cases. "Politics" can expressed in subtle ways and not necessarily as the central topic at hand, but imbued into it.

I'm reminded of Ted Nelson's notion that politics, loosely defined, is "clash and reconciliation of agendas" and, "If software is successful, it steers the path that many users take, and selects among many possibilities to further the creator's agenda...Suppressing the other possibilities may also be part of the agenda."

https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/video/the-politics-of-internet-soft...

In any case, I get & appreciate the practical goal here and what you're looking to accomplish. I know I specifically need a Trump-related detox, in general (although not because of anything I've seen on HN).

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This camel in the sand approach clamors to roll back to a time when tech was not political.

But now tech is political, surveillance and the surveillance economy being built by SV companies is political, techologists working for the government building invasive surveillance systems is political, the betrayal of people by a technical elite is political, the censorship advocated by social media based out of sv is political, AI is political.

Ignoring this is like an arms supplier turning a blind eye to his weapons used to kill innocents choosing to focus on specifications. ie a world without morality. That's not protecting values or intellectual curiosity, its killing it.

The kind of forum HN has morphed into for lack of an alternative cannot be run by an organization with commercial interests. Then you get knee jerk arbitary decisions like this that begets a culture of passivity accepting what ever is handed down to you. I think the technical voice needs more robust expression and to speak as one with the rest of the population rather than seek isolation and alienation.

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers

Why isn't this exactly like playing "Nearer My God to Thee" on the deck of the Titanic? The ship is sinking and we're going to talk not about the water rushing in through the hole in the hull, but about ...gardening?

By all means let's have a civilized conversation but we're in a political crisis and "we" as "hackers" need to help fix it, not wish it wasn't so.

Please god. Great idea. Also I'm sick of reading about "Fake News". Please stop it. Please.

I know an engineer from Iran. He's a great guy, not particularly religious at all. Pretty much a totally normal guy. I asked him about politics in Iran. He said when he was going to school for engineering in Iran where he grew up, his friends all made a pact to completely ignore and stay out of politics. He said it with a smile on his face and absolutely no regret.

That's also a good answer for someone who was highly involved in politics - and might explain the smile.

It's a half measure and it won't help much.

Hackernews is like reddit before subreddits.

It's too big now, too many people, too disparate of subjects, too much noise and not enough signal.

Over the past couple years, definitely in the past 2, hackernews has gone from say a reddit SV subreddit, to a generalized, worldnews/politics/general news generic reddit.

That's not what this is. And when hackernews becomes what reddit.com/r/reddit.com used to be, it dilutes the userbase and invites/attracts people who have nothing to do with the hackernews ideology and culture.

This is a positive first step, but far too little and maybe too late.

This site is becoming a generic catch-all subreddit for all news, and with that change the userbase is reflecting the lack of focus on SV/technology/hacker culture.

Without dramatic intervention, the tides will turn and hackernews will not be an attractive place for real hackers, real innovators. Won't be worth their time anymore. They'll find greener pastures. Many already are.

Who counts? I don't think by "SV/technology/hacker culture" you literally mean Silicon Valley only.

How about a devops person, working with all the latest tech? Does it matter if they reside in Virginia and work for the CIA?

How about a GPGPU and FPGA programmer in Kansas? Does it matter if the code they write is for cruise missiles and they attend Westboro Baptist?

I think this is a good idea. I realize that, you know, freedom of speech and all, but this is called HACKER NEWS.

I would personally like it best if the political news just lessened overall, rather than stopping entirely for a week, but what can you do. Can't just tell people "actually, the political thermometer is at 25°C, gotta let it cool down to 21°C."

Here's a couple of problems.

1) Many things are political on some level. Consider encryption, the future of technology, automation, global trade. What counts as political?

2) Not discussing things that are deemed "political" is itself a political act - you're basically saying, "we don't need to talk about these things that are actively causing harm." Often times, this is a show of support for the status quo - it's the privileged who get to say what conversations can and cannot be had, and they rarely say, 'let us stop talking about this subject that deeply affects us'. They say that about things that don't matter to them, because they're worried about civility.

3) Some people are actually actively fighting for their very right to exist, politically and in the physical world. Consider the current administration's (especially the VP) stance toward LGBTQIA people, or toward abortion, or consider the active physical harm perpetrated on the bodies of non-white people by institutions and corporations. If you're upset because people are getting their feelings hurt, consider the people whose actual bodies are being hurt, whom you are now potentially silencing.

Sure, maybe hackernews should be a place where people post stuff like "Show HN: Version 1.2 of my parsing state machine" and nothing else. Maybe we yearn for the yester-days of freshmeat or whatever.

I don't operate under the assumption that HN is a free space or a space for me in particular or demand the right to say anything I want on its platform. I did appreciate its relative openness and the general quality of its commentariat. But this experiment has radically altered my opinion of HN as an online space. I'm going to re-evaluate that, I guess.

This really does feel like someone grumpily saying, "keep it down, kids, we're trying to eat dinner here!"

Yay, I fully endorse this policy and hope that it gets extended forever.

Would you always try to car discussions in a baseball forum?

They are both valid topics. But there is a reason why forums specialize on particular topics.

Hi,

my personal POV is that a lot of issues affecting the tech community at large resolve to politics in the end - be it the fight of cities and entire countries against AirBnB and Uber for example, the infamous Flint water disaster, the "fake news" battle, internet censorship, snoopers' overreach, the role of Big Data in elections, voting machine fraud...

Nearly every story (even those about new startups "disrupting" a specific market - markets ripe for disruption are usually created by political decisions, be it Republicans or Democrats!) has its base in politics, and I believe it is our duty as citizens and educated people to call politicians and their parties out when they mess stuff up.

Therefore, I believe that prohibiting political discussions outright is a dangerous move - I'm all fine with penalties or flagging if a discussion devolves into outright fight, but not for simply bringing up the topic.

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) poor etiquette, if not outright bad behavior. However, seeing that he had for over a year been a contributing member, I felt that a total ban was heavy-handed and that simply being punished temporarily for a transgression might have served better.

Is anyone familiar with an online forum that merely temporarily punishes transgressors w/o permanently banning them? Does anyone else think banning is sometimes a bit too much punishment?

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.

You don't do that anymore. Your correspondence has increasingly turned into approbation and you show an unwillingness to explain why someone is even rate limited.

I realize the rate limit is upsetting you, but we've given you a ton of explanation and detailed information about what you need to do in order to have it lifted. Instead you've been doing the opposite. I'm not sure why that is, but it would be good if you'd stop.

I can publish our correspondence if you'd like, perhaps others can say what you told me I need to do?

I think its a sad day that we can't attempt to be intellectually curious just because its politically related. This last election has prompted me to start reading more on both sides and has lead me to some other readings such as the constitution, economic theory, history, etc.

It is possible to talk about these topics from an academic perspective and it feels like banning it for a week is equivalent to putting your head in the sand and ignoring it because its too hard to have a conversation about it. This is exactly the behavior I was motivated to try and change in myself (stick to tech only, ignore other issues).

Yes, its very difficult to talk about some politics in thoughtful ways but I would hope a community like HN has the people needed to try and address some of the issues coming up. Be it technical (detecting fake news, biases, etc) or intellectual commentary.

I understand and sympathize with what you've said here. I also know that empirically this is not the case on HN, at least not under the current environment (e.g., community, guidelines, moderation, current events and political situation). Ignoring that puts what HN is and strives to be at risk.

I've also been actively working on engaging constructively in difficult, contentious conversation. HN is one forum. If politics is on area that's generally avoided here for the benefit of quality discussion on other topics, there are other forums where one can. And perhaps after a detox week (or two?), constructive political might work on HN. I certainly hope so, but am also aware of how difficult that can be in person, and even more so online.

Can we have a Javascript framework detox week the week after?

I welcome this experiment. There are so many other places for discussion and news about politics, but less so about startups and technology-hacker-related stories.

> Political conflicts cause harm here.

If not the ideal scenario, this certainly isn't the worst possible outcome. To paraphrase Martin Niemöller, if you don't speak up for other people then who's going to be left to speak up for you?

Although it may appear the politics and gardening are unrelated or in opposition, there is actually an important link. PG always lists Kenneth Clark as one of his biggest influences. And if you actually watch Civilisation, in the first episode he says that it's a misconception that art arises whenever people have the resources to do things other than working or whatever. Rather, making art (loosely defined) always entails an enormous personal sacrifice, one which people only undertake when they have faith in the longterm stability of society.

Though I do not consider this a wise move, it is limited to a week so I don't think the "harm" will be that great (however, nor do I think the benefit will be at all worth the effort of explaining the flags to people who didn't see this Tell HN).

The reason I don't consider it wise is that I think the current political situation is completely unique at least in my lifetime (<40 years) and is not the typical political camps bickering with each other over simply "politics".

Rather, this time around there are Real Issues that are Important. The current trend of populism will have global ramifications for many decades to come. Not allowing discussion on these topics seems counter-productive to me.

Politics isn't some isolated thing. Politics is about everything we do and say. A techie elite deciding what they do isn't political, or worse, beyond politics, is part of what got us to this point in the first place.

> HN is a garden, politics is war by other means

Denial, denial, denial. This is like the arms dealers selling to both sides in third world conflict and claiming they are ethically above the killing.

You claim intellectual curiosity, but you peddle intellectual dishonesty.

Thank you, btw. I left HN months ago, and today come back to see exactly the pathetic hypocrisy that turned me off in the first place. Shit like this makes me be ashamed to be part of the tech community.

Sure, let's hide from the real world and pretend it isn't happening.

> Political Detox Week

I don't understand how so many people have missed the word "week" in this sentence.

This is an experiment, and it's going to last a very short period of time; I support it. I oppose banning political articles & discussion on HN in the long-term, but that's not what this is. It seems the distinction has been missed in most of the comments.

One option I would like to suggest is an option whereby people can enable or disable a filter for political stories. This way if you just want to come and geek out about tech, you can do so, or if you want to follow political issues you have that option as well. I'd use both modes at different times depending on my mood.

This seems like yet another symptom of a culture that doesn't see the value of emotional states and thus tries to prevent triggers to such states. I think perhaps a system of encouraging rational thought and healing the underlying issues would be more effective. Also, politics is about how resources are allocated in society -- that means everything has a political implication for the most part. Politics doesn't have to be war. If hacker news is a garden, then politics is how we decide who gets to enjoy the fruits of the garden and who doesn't.

I see a need for an upgrade in political discourse, yet I'm not convinced eliminating conversations entirely is the answer.

And to think, HN is already where I go to get away from politics. The site already only barely tracks the daily/weekly news cycle.

"Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones. We can't be both at the same time."

I think this calls for more moderation so users that can speak civilly and intellectually about politics can do so, not banning speaking of politics entirely. "Conflict activat[ing] the primitive brain" is rather infantilizing, gaslighting, and not true.

It is true, and quite literally so. Our fight-or-flight threat detection systems (what I meant by 'primitive brain') get activated when these topics flare up, and when that happens people can't even see each other as human, let alone engage each other in intellectual curiosity, which is the purpose of this site.

I fail to see how encouraging this kind of mentality, even in this small of a dose, doesn't further the historically disastrous mentality that engineering is separate from a social and historical context. There are scenarios now where the digital infrastructure of Google, Facebook, et al are seized upon (even more so) for widely destructive ends that have spiked in their probability. Apple is already showing signs of caving. And given the examples of companies like IBM, I'm not terribly optimistic that there's gonna be some kind of ground swell rebellion against the worse possible outcomes.

It's interesting that comments seem to be either strongly in favor, or strongly against. I'll buck the trend and say that I personally don't actually care all that much.

I do like talking about politics, especially when it's polite and level-headed discussion (which seems to be the norm here in NH), and a lot of my comments are on that subject. So yes, it would be somewhat sad to see that go.

But the bulk of HN's value lies mostly elsewhere, and not being able to talk about politics here would still keep it a valuable platform and an interesting community to participate in.

So it's really not a big deal one way or the other.

Politics are deeply engrained in the fabric of HN. Just a few examples that come immediately to mind:

* Peter Thiel's support of Trump. * Mass Surveillance Laws. * Net Neutrality.

Are we going to simply avoid any and all potentially controversial subjects?

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.)

I'm not a mod, but I wouldn't flag your comment. Mentioning faith-based alternatives for human interaction may not be 100% on-topic, but it isn't political or divisive.

Now, if you had recommended one faith/sect over others for a superior experience of human interaction, then maybe you'd have a problem.

This detox experiment calls for all members of the community to police all comments for all mentions of the censored concepts.

Regardless of whether a given comment is OK now, once this detox experiment gains steam will anyone be able to mention anything about any of the designated concepts under the anxious eyes of a newly deputized membership?

(I'm specifically thinking about the 99th percentile of moderation activity given the large number of people on the site and the fact that neutral opinions are not counted by the current voting system.)

Or, will these sorts of down votes be weighted? And if so, by what? Using the karma system doesn't seem appropriate - there are many well-spoken members on HN that hold wildly different, even antagonistic, viewpoints.

What inhibits abusive moderation activity of the sort observed when a CTR-like group was actively manipulating /r/politics?

Ah, the "Slippery Slope" fallacy. I can't prove you wrong, but time might be able to.

the downvotes will likely not be weighted. flagged comments will likely have +3 karma as much as they have -3 karma. at least, that's the hope of a 1-week moratorium, right?

To answer your question, the only thing stopping the abusive meta-moderation activity are the two mods here. So long as the posts otherwise meet the posting guidelines, they'll likely remain unmoderated. If they're not flagged, they might not even pop up on the moderator's radar.

Basically, it is up to you to point the mods at things that may or may not be abusive. Which I guess answers your question.

OTH I find the concept of religion to be very political...

The boundaries of political discourse are like art or porn. You know it when you see it but one person's+ definition is different to another.

+ NB I used the word "person" in this sentence rather than "man" - some would therefore say that my comment has a political slant because it is attempting to use gender neutral words - I would say it isn't because I always try to use gender neutral words...

Well played.

That comment seems fine to me.

a welcomed move really.

i come here to read tech news and be part of one of the least toxic communities that's not my old irc channels.

as to politics, there's futurology and discussing sociology, and there's left vs right, "make mericuh gr8 agin" vs "gief all monies to poor" politics, which would put HN on some political brigade's list.

i don't have anything against future speculation and theorizing about conservative\liberal angles to automation and rise of AI or voting machine tech.

it'll be interesting to see what results the detox week will bear!

>...it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones. We can't be both at the same time.

I 100% agree with this analysis, but is the answer really to avoid discussion of politics altogether? I don't agree, and I think of the forums I visit, this one has the best chance of maintaining a high percentage of rational discussion to tribal noise.

This is an interesting experiment. I personally think decreasing the political "tone" of HN is a sensible goal, but I don't expect that this approach will do well for meeting that goal. Specifically, I don't think the people who most want HN to be political will respond well to this.

There is a reason the shadow-ban was invented: when loudmouthed/trollish users are allowed to realize they are unwelcome, they get angry, and express that anger by defacing, defaming, DDoSing, etc. the community that has rejected them.

My personal belief is that the best thing to do is to not disallow this content altogether, but rather to ghettoize it.

Two examples of this:

• How Metafilter treats posts about Metafilter: they're allowed, but they have to go into a special "meta" ghetto, separate from regular content, where only people who want to see that kind of thing will have to see it.

• 4chan frequently makes new boards—new "homes" for certain content types—just to quarantine content it doesn't like. For example, /soc/ was not created because the 4chan moderators think 4chan should have a meetups+dating board, but rather because such threads were incessant on /b/.

---

Now, HN already has something quite like these approaches, but IMHO better: the "showdead" system for negative-scored posts, which ghettoizes posts but also individual comment subthreads of posts, in a very granular way.

Here's the experiment I'd like to see done, re-using the "showdead" code:

• Split downvotes into an "irrelevant/Obviously Did Not Read The Article" button and a separate "is political" button (where you can press either or both on any given post.) Track the totals separately.

• If a post's (upvotes - irrelevant) is negative, then it's "dead" as happens now, and you have to have "showdead" on to see it.

• If a post's (upvotes - is_political) is negative, then it's "politics", and you have to have "showpolitics" on to see it.

• If both scores are negative, then you have to have both filters on to see the post.

• Posts would sort/rank according to (upvotes - sqrt(irrelevant^2 + is_political^2)).

I think this alternative would ensure that the people who most want to get into tribal flamewars would "go quietly into the night" (from everyone else's perspective), rather than becoming the sworn nemesis of the community.

It's not clear to me what is politics.

For instance, I just came across this interesting article from The Brookings Institution: "Another Clinton-Trump divide: High-output America vs low-output America" [1].

It's a look at how the election broke down by county. Clinton won 472 counties, Trump won 2584. The counties Clinton won produce 64% of the country's GDP, with Trump's counties producing 36%. With the exceptions of the Phoenix, Fort Worth, and a big chunk of Long Island, Clinton won all the counties that have large economies.

They have a neat visualization of all the counties by size of contribution to GDP and who won them.

The discuss how this big a divide is "unprecedented in the era of modern economic statistics".

The article itself is not taking any political position. It is just providing a way to perhaps get some insight into how the election came out the way it did.

Would this article count as politics and so be subject to this week's ban? Or is it an interesting look at data that happens to be data about a political event?

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2016/11/29/another...

But wouldn't this clearly be politics? And is this really necessary for HN?

Absolutely, yes. It's not about the stories, but about the threads they spawn. There is virtually no chance such a story would generate useful discussion in the current climate on HN. In fact, that's the kind of political story that would probably get flagged off the site even if we weren't in detox.

Is this some special narrow definition of "political", or is the expectation really that everything touching in any way upon government or public affairs of any country will be deemed off-topic and killed?

Because a very large share of HN stories and comments have political content in the dictionary definition (it's hard to address the societal impact of anything even in a descriptive way, much less to discuss views of the merits of such impacts, without such content.)

Thank you this is fantastic. I try to keep political discussions separate from technology and being unable to read hacker news without facing political discussions is taxing.

> Why? Political conflicts cause harm here. The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those things are lost when political emotions seize control.

Decides and all wise and smart moderator. People on HN somehow are capable of perfectly logical and intellectually enlightening arguments when discussing Javascript frameworks, best practices of team management, recruiting processes and if women are less paid in tech industry and their love and devotion for Elon Musk.

> Worse, these harsher patterns can spread through the rest of the culture, threatening the community as a whole. A detox week seems like a good way to strengthen the immune system and to see how HN functions under altered conditions.

How a detox week helps compared to outright banning it ? Isnt that better ?

This is how I read above comment:

Some HN users might be feeling triggered to hear opinions that go against their own political opinions. Such people might be in large numbers. Censoring political opinions might help HN to keep these users. But HN moderators are not sure if this hurts HN very badly. This detox week is basically an A/B test to see if HN does indeed lose by censoring political opinions.

This must be renamed to "Political Safe Space Week to figure out if we can outright ban political speech on HN".

> Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain

The unfortunate fact is that political discourse in America (and, I understand, in many places elsewhere), has been reduced to lizard-brain questions.

In particular, but certainly not as the only example, the US president-elect ran on a platform that many of us would characterize as playing off machismo and fight-or-flight, rather than actual policy proposals.

HN is a good thing not because it's a way to waste time at work, but because discussing technology ultimately helps us create better technology. But the assumption in this decision seems to be that discussing politics doesn't help us make better political decisions.

I think it's clear to most of us that tech's recent success is due in large part to communities -- open source, StackOverflow, and yes, HN. We learn from each other, and this makes us all better.

If we think this model doesn't apply to politics, that each of us is better left to make up our minds independently, and that we cannot learn from each other, I fear for the future of democracy.

> Have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we'll try to allay them. This really is an experiment; we don't have an opinion yet about longer-term changes. Our hope is that we can learn together by watching what happens when we try something new.

What are the criteria you've established for evaluating whether the experiment was a success? Do you have evidence of HN being used to seed political clickbait stories? Voting rings? Etc.?

Was this decision made top-down or in response to the desire of the community?

As someone who values the contributors to HN and appreciates the diverse set of opinions, perspectives and critical thinking I find here, which are all handled 99% of the time with decent respectfulness as far as I can tell, I find this effort kind of sad.

Hopefully we learn something good from this, but not sure what that could be, how to decide if it's good, or if it will be worth the effort.

Politics is about the distribution of power, in that way it's much broader than government. It goes all the way from UN, WHO through nation-states down to the community, home and even bedroom. The personal is indeed political as they say [0].

Speech is a form of power. Decisions about which speech is allowed affect the distributions of power and it's easy to see how the decision to ban politics is itself political.

In this sense it's not possible to ban politics from HN, only to change the distribution of politics.

We should examine the ways that a ban like this might change the distributions of politics and power among the HN community. I suspect we'd find it reduces the power among marginalized communities. Even if you're not from one of those communities you can really benefit by reading their writings. In that case to cut off those voices is a shame. It's a loss.

Who's deciding what counts as political and not? Moderators. We should examine that. "Banning politics" essentially becomes "Moderators politics."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_personal_is_political

Everyone on the left is calling this oppression and suppression.

Everyone on the right is calling this an affront to free speech.

When you piss off everyone, you are probably doing the right thing.

A lot of people seem to be reacting to the idea that all political discussion will always be banned forever on HN. Politics is important and affects everything in its own way, but this is just a post-election cooldown from all the super-polarizing Trump bullshit that has been preoccupying America for the past eighteen months. We're going to have plenty more to talk about starting January; I for one, welcome the break.

I think not talking about politics is counter-productive. I think if more people would talk to each other about political topics, then liars like Donald Trump wouldn't get elected.

Btw, if there are any Trump supporters on HN, it would be interesting to hear their views. Likely, due to how the community works they can't be heard due to downvoting and/or flagging which I think is a shame. I prefer more debate over less.

I have had the feeling that HN has been surreptiously invaded by a troll army, specifically tasked with corrupting the ongoing discovery of consensus.

I think it's a great idea. Will this be posted publicly somewhere so people who did not see this post will know not to submit political stories?

Not sure why you got downvoted. Any thread from a paywalled site has people asking why it's okay to post paywalled content, or how to get around the paywall, even though that was announced in a similar thread.

This is welcome and refreshing.

What is the experiment? What is the hypothesis and what are the metrics we will be using to measure success or failure? I cannot understand how this is healthy or beneficial. If there are disrespectful comments, moderate them. But saying "some people cannot talk about these things constructively so lets not talk about these things at all" is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation.

Thank you for reminding us here about that. Let's make it a month? A year? :-)

I understand the sentiment, and promoting civil discourse is a wonderful goal. But the way forward is figuring out how to promote the good, and discourage the bad, not disengagement.

I don't think I can say why it is important to engage better than Charles Krauthammer, so I'll just put his words here.

"While science, medicine, art, poetry, architecture, chess, space, sports, number theory and all things hard and beautiful promise purity, elegance and sometimes even transcendence, they are fundamentally subordinate. In the end, they must bow to the sovereignty of politics.

Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything – high and low and, most especially, high – lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933… Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns."

Yes! This is awesome. All of the politics is tiring.

HN isn't a constructive forum for arguing politics anyway. I don't know that such a forum even exists.

If you want to influence people, take Confucius' advice and live a model public life that inspires (or shames) others into behaving ethically. Don't waste time dragging yourself down into arguments with base people, live a life that contrasts yourself with base people in the eyes of others. Let you successes, your intelligence and your quality of life, sell your politics. I make sure all my friends, especially my politically- and religiously-extreme ones, know how great my life is. Every time I post a picture of my smiling happy family and our successes, I am advertising my moderately-liberal politics and my Humanist philosophy. And when my conservative Christian friends do the same, they are successfully influencing me to have a more positive outlook of their politics and religion. Be a friendly, caring representative of your side of the aisle and you will constructively influence others.

All censorship is done with good intentions. Things are censored because they are somehow against a certain set of values or they threaten the well-being of the establishment.

So this move is on thin ice.

But I also think that politics and politicians in particular are getting a lot more media exposure than they deserve or need.

Politicians are the new rock stars... but they shouldn't be. They should be spending time working on actual societal problems - the things they've been elected for.

All the rest of us, too, should give them a lot less attention and focus our attention on issues rather than people.

Political affiliation is a very subjective thing, similar to tastes in music or art or sex. There's no perfect solution to all the problems we're facing and that's why we disagree on things.

So often political discussion is a futile attempt to convince the other side that the worst (their point of view) is the best (our point of view). Which is a waste of energy and time and should be avoided.

Considering all of these factors, with a shade of worry I think this is the right thing to do.

You've used the word experiment to describe this ban, so I'm interested to know: - What hypothesis is being tested? - What are the metrics that will be used to conduct the test?

My gut reaction is one of disappointment. I've enjoyed and appreciated the political discussion on HN, which has stood out from other political discussion on the web. My experience has been that the HN community respects facts and evidence-based discourse and that's been refreshing in an environment swirling with fake news.

Further, as a community interested in startups that often seeks "disruption" we need to think more about the social impact and ramifications of technology on society and on those who are disrupted.

Edit: I agree with the idea of holding the HN community to a high standard of civil dialog for political discussion or any topic like tabs vs spaces or language vs language. A tech-infused alternative to this thread might be, "Ask HN: Chat bot for managing / extinguishing flame wars?"

Excellent decision. You only need to look at what happened on reddit in /r/politics or /r/the_donald. The polarization is poison for creating a shared culture for intelligent discussion of topical issues. To be sure - these debates are important - but it's not like there's a shortage of forums that do cater to this stuff.

This item immediately came up with the really great news that the California drought is ending:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108944

So, that immediately prompted follow-up comments about rivalries between northern and southern Californians over water use (edit: including whether the choice of this metric is southern-Californian political propaganda!), about whether Californians can manage to reduce the amount of water that we need, about whether the west has too much human settlement, etc. While those may not align very well with political ideologies that have been the most controversial here, they could be seen as political questions (and they could potentially lead to flamewarring over different aspects of environmentalism).

How does this kind of topic fit in with this plan, dang?

This sounds awesome. Politics has weighed heavily on here at times, even on topics that... just aren't relevant to the tech industry.

It'll be interesting to see where this line falls on tech politics stories this week. Is a post about like... the FCC transition team in or out this week? It's definitely political, but also very tech.

To all the people saying there are lot's of other places to discuss politics - what good quality ones (with reasonable moderation, not total echo chambers, accessible to normal people) would you recommend? I'm genuinely asking, I feel like they are not that easy to be found. For my part, I like slatestarcodex.

I already did my detox. Deleted my bookmarks to political news sites, unfriended some IMHO toxic people on FB and have generally refrained from commenting on politics, of any kind, since the election.

Kind of plan on staying that course.

Keep the political links, discussions, etc. It's not like I have to read them or comment on them if they appear.

And neither do you.

Disagree, not because it isn't a good idea right now, but :

a) we should not abandon the general rules, unless under the most exceptional circumstances [ ie. unless these posts threaten to kill the HN site or render it unusable in the main, we should not adopt a special rule ]

b) its un-needed, in the sense we can choose to self impose this by not upvoting overly political stories/comments

c) HN is already practicing too much self-censorship - we need to tolerate some extremes / ugly points of view, in order to keep a healthy community where free speech is highly valued and where any subject can be discussed

d) imo HN is equally susceptible to hostile takeover by ugly "trumpism"'s as it is by political-correctness / overly tolerant relativism. It is for each of us to upvote/downvote/comment in order to fight against memes that might enslave this community and its freedoms.

One concern I immediately have is that what is politics to one person might not be politics to another, and given that too many flags that are judged to be inaccurate result in the removal of the user's ability to flag...

You see where I'm going with this. It may be worth rescinding that policy during the testing period.

There are dozens of comments saying in effect "but politics are important!!!!"

That could certainly be true, but does that mean that they are important and appropriate in all circumstances? Are no areas allowed to have a politics free discussion?

I applaud this change. The only criticism I have is that it's limited to a week.

A big part of today's media environment is mediated through tech's most popular and/or biggest companies (Facebook and Google, Reddit, probably to a smaller degree Apple), with the internal choices of tech's last big success (Facebook) having likely strongly influenced the last election.

I disagree strongly with suppression. You break it, you own it. the point of view of most younger and not so young people is nowadays mediated through tech via social media. Here is the place where it is most important to have a debate about that.

If you want to moderate it differently from other subjects, add a different set of tags or karma reservoir so that it doesn't spill over from it. I think it's important to keep the political stories on the front page, especially as this election's outcome will create incredible changes.

I fully support this and think it's been a long time coming.

Civil discussion and political discussion are fully incompatible.

You might want to check where the word "civil" comes from...

Given the profound affect tech has had on the last US election cycle, it is difficult not to read this ban as the execution of a political agenda.

The idea that the two can be extricated from one another is absurd on its face.

But what's also notable is the boldness of saying it out loud. It has always been the policy of HN to flag out the majority of "politics" before it resides in the new queue for more than an hour or two.

This "experiment" will surely quash conflict, but by banning anyone who has any reason to express contention. The burden of social censure has always been placed firmly on the head of the aggrieved on HN, but it's been an unofficial policy until now. People like me are rate limited for being "too contentious" on political subjects already. Now we're outright forbidden from talking about it.

I'm not sure how I feel about the idea. [Rumination Required]

However, I definitely like that you're trying it out.

I am a hacker and a part of this community and have been for many years. My little family is gay and mixed race, and because I work for a non-profit relies on the government for health insurance. My in-laws are brown people living in a hostile part of the United States where vicious hate crimes are spiking.

Why don't I qualify as part of the community? Politics is now more and more bearing down on my family, oppressing us, threatening us. We are afraid and depressed every day, even while probably cowering from fully facing the gravity of the threat this administration poses. It is hard to code when you are terrified.

Why doesn't HN care about me? Why aren't its powerful, its brilliant, its wealthy, abandoning all other projects to protect me? Why? I need you to save my family. Please.

I'm worried about how this will effect civictech, edtech, govtech story coverage which has been great in recent years on HN and are important for helping the community to be informed of how it's contributing and how individuals can contribute to addressing societal issues.

Thank you, I'd also prefer HN is only tangentially political. I don't want it to become reddit.

shrug, I haven't seen any submissions or threads I'd consider political for over a week.

I see all the re-assurances about this being "only for one week", but what's the point of a one-week experiment if you're not at least remotely considering making it long-term?

You even say yourself that "we don't have an opinion yet about longer-term changes" and I assume you're hoping the experiment maybe helps you form that opinion?

While I understand the intent behind this decision I don't see it accomplishing anything worthwhile. It may reduce flamewars temporarily, but people get flamey on tech topics too.

It's a hell of a privilege to think that technology and business discussion can be separated from political discussion. Politics will constantly intersect with technology and business.

You're using a battering ram to hammer a nail.

I get it, the spate of political discussion on HN is stressful as politics is people and the recent change in political climate means a musical chair of winners and losers of the process.

But I disagree about the approach -- what is politics anyways? Most polarizing these days: probably gender, race, and socioeconomic status, and the various parties cater to those human categories. We all inherently have these things that form the basis of our thoughts and how we see the world -- so I honestly don't think it's easy to separate.

If the cost of thoughtful conversations on politics is dealing with flame, then many of us are glad to pay the cost of doing business -- and I hope you'd find a majority of people here would behave similarly.

I first came to HN because I wanted someplace to escape the political news cycle. Not because I because I wanted to avoid politics altogether.

This seems like the right move for now. But we should be able to discuss political matters when they intersect with the topic at hand.

I understand, and I know HN has the right to control speech in the forum it owns. So I will only write this in the thread where I have been invited to write it (and will note that I am a Libertarian so I of course did not vote for Trump): The major theme of the media and in many comment threads on many sites has been to decry the totalitarian, authoritarian nature of the coming Trump regime. I find it ironic that the response of HN is to implement thought control by suppressing an entire genre of thought. After all, once you rise above the level of bits and bytes, you are going to get into political speech. But go ahead. It's a free country. Just not a free forum (here, that is).

It might be a very boring week for stories, and I do share drzaiusapelord's concern this is happening when a new cabinet is being announced. Plus some troubling laws out of Australia and the UK.

Science without philosophy is dangerous, and philosophy without science has no use. The political implications of technology are a big part of the discussion.

I guess I don't believe this step would have been taken if someone else won, and that belief, justified or unjustified, troubles me.

But, I guess anything that gets the damn pipeline news off HN is fine. I'm getting a little sick of the distortion field and do gooders that are going to leave people high-and-dry on that one.

[I voted 3rd party for the top spot in ND if it matters]

I do think you should clarify what you mean by politics.

Clearly you don't mean stories touched by politics like uber tracking users or everything tech would be offtopic. Clearly you do mean stories about Trump. Somewhere in the middle a line has to be drawn.

Many of us were skeptical when visible HN leadership expressed sentiments over and over like this:

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/785769454516916228?lang=en

And we, in turn, were criticized for daring to express our thoughts that, if Trump were elected, YC would play the typical role of the moneyed, comfortable, and powerful, and not use any of its significant power to work towards a better end.

Anyways, cool to put a moratorium on political discussion < 15 days before the electors vote and 45 days before Inauguration. I feel relieved, and not proven right at all.

pg hasn't had any role on HN for a long time. Which is too bad for HN, but he definitely isn't "HN leadership". Leadership emeritus maybe.

Politics are against the guidelines of HN. That is why I created Commit https://commit.ws/ after the election.

Everyone wanting to continue these conversations, please join us there.

> What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive comments. What it is not: a political, ideological, national, racial, or religious battlefield.

What Hacker News really is: a community of smart, mostly rational, tech-interested people of the world, impacted by world politics, who share stories and ideas.

Nobody asks for it to be an ideological or political battlefield - common sense and moderation should be able prevent this. But if this somewhat like-minded community can have a political impact in any way (anywhere in the world) by sharing and discussing political ideas, I cannot see why you would stand in the way of that.

> Political conflicts cause harm here.

Preventing political discussions causes far more harm than it prevents. I understand the intent. I understand the problem. Flame wars are not productive. But I think this is a poor response to a valid problem.

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.

Anything even vaguely political gets flagged to hell within minutes anyway, even if they're directly applicable to technology such as labor issues, electronic surveillance, antitrust, FCC news, the editorial control of news in walled gardens, electronic voting, domestic organized commenting squads (as opposed to Russian and Chinese, which are always fair game.) The idea that it's somehow clogging up HN more than the endless glut of random light WaPo, NYT and Nautilus science articles is weird.

I'd be interested in examples of what a political story or a political thread are, because none were given.

Preaching to the choir here, but I would like to voice my strong dissent towards this move.

Trump and his cabinet directly effect everything HN stands for: the planet, space exploration, online surveillance. These are not "off-topic" at all. In fact, I'd go as far to argue that even this week-long ban should not touch anything to do with climate change. Climate change is science, not politics, and what Trump does now (see: EPA pick) affects this like nothing else.

Please let this be an experiment and nothing more. I come to HN to have a discussion on a wide range of topics, including politics.

Thanks.

"It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war."

I'm laughing at how pedant this group is. Viewed under a microscope, sliced and diced a thousand ways and all possible repercussions and views are debated. It's just a week! We'll survive :)

If you need political discourse in your week with something just like HN, feel free to go http://swintonreport.com

Sister site to HN the way it looks.

It seems like you're doing a dry run of your ability to censor the community. By asking members to flag posts pertaining to politics, you're going to drastically offer what people see by default.

And when are you going to use this newfound ability again? When you arbitrarily get tired of some other topic? And even if you use this responsibly, what about the person who has your job next?

I've been active on this site for over eight years now. We've managed to govern ourselves just fine. I really hope this isn't a moment we all point back to in the future.

Most of the politics on HN has been significantly less than previous years. Previously, I could go to HN and get knowledge about various topics related to election results, polling bias, etc. Now, it's pretty limited, literally I saw/see zero items related to politics most days. Honestly, I think politics has as much to do about "hacking" as just about everything else.

Also, who decides what's political. I'm sick of hearing about socialist ideology, and I consider it politics, but I'm guessing that's not what you mean...

Politics (outside of those that affect tech) should have never been allowed in the first place. Any place where politics isn't specifically forbidden always degenerates into this sort of situation.

Life is politics here's 2 from the current front page :

8 - Silicon Valley’s Culture, Not Its Companies, Dominates in China (nytimes.com)

21 - Russian deaths from malnutrition rate 5x lower than in the US (worldlifeexpectancy.com)

This is a most unfortunate framing. Politics is not toxic. It is the means by which our society discusses and makes big decisions. Perhaps s/Detox/Vacation/ could have worked?

Certain types of political discussion most certainly can be toxic. I'd support any effort to keep HN free of that. I'd also respect a choice to keep HN completely free of politics if you chose to go in that direction, though I'd rather see a more positive attempt to get the HN community more engaged with the serious political issues of our time.

I am curious; does this apply to all of world's political sphere? Or only the United States'? If this applies to only US politics, then it becomes that much harder to qualify this as a political detox. If this is a detox from _all_ politics, then it is fundamentally unfair, as no recent political event in any other country has been controversial enough to warrant a censoring from HN. You cannot (you _can_, but you shouldn't) be biased towards any one section of HN userbase to the detriment of _all_ of the users.

Are we talking just us election controversy stuff? If so, this sounds like a welcomed reprieve.

However if this blackout includes government level censorship and attacks on internet freedom it seems like a bad move

As a one-off thing, this sounds good. Implemented longer, term, though, I think it would be trying to solve a problem by treating the symptoms. Politics isn't the problem, since politics is simply the process of making group decisions. The problem is not the topic but the behavior.

So what does good, relevant, political discussion on HN look like? What does bad (but relevant) political discussion look like? Then update the guidelines accordingly. Maybe the guidelines could even have examples.

Why not look at Wikipedia and see how they are tackling controversial topics? Here it sounds like a disappointing ostrich experiment. Let's bury our head in sand, let the storm pass away and see what happens.

I think it's a good think that people are indignant on both side. Let's organise ourself. We have the tools, the concepts, the technology. I am sure it's possible to find some common ground and have some data-driven debates/discussions and form some more balance opinions/belief.

What I really fear is that simple statements of fact, e.g. "average global temperatures are increasing", will be flagged as being (scare quotes) political (end scare quotes).

Can we migrate to an open-source alternative to Hacker News already?

lobste.rs exists, but it's invite only.

I'm curious about the choice of words "open-source" here. What would having the source available change with respect to this "Tell HN"? Something along the lines of no mods? No voting/flagging? Nothing off-topic?

Community operated and moderated. It's amazing how the entire tech community has come together on a message board run by venture capital. It's not a neutral forum. At the very least, a GNU-friendlier alternative would be appreciated.

I have prior moderating experience and I have been online a long time. My experiences suggest that having paid mods dramatically improves a forum. Volunteer staff cannot be expected to meet the same rigorous standards as paid staff and they never do.

As someone whose moderating experience was unpaid, I can tell you part of the reason for that: We resent having to deal with assholes who make our jobs difficult and don't appreciate us giving our time and energy to the site for free, because we believe in the cause.

No, it is not a neutral forum. There is no such thing.

Also, my honest feeling is "Feel free to start one." That isn't snark, but I assume it would be interpreted as such because you are asking people to start this rather than saying "Hey, guys, I am tired of this and I have started an open source version over at (THIS LINK) and if you are as fed up with HN as I am, hey, here is an alternative."

People who propose the kind of seemingly idealistic suggestions of the sort you are proposing almost never want to roll up their sleeves and do the work -- because, hey, work is hard and no one is paying them and yadda. Which is likely why HN is the place to be for so many people: Because it is well moderated by folks who get paid, because it supports a business agenda and doesn't need ads or the like to pay the bills. The business -- YC -- is plenty successful and can afford to support the forum for its purposes in a way that doesn't unduly impinge on what people can discuss here.

Thanks for the clarification. I encourage you to use the phrase "community operated and moderated" in that case. Open source is overloaded as it is. Conflating community operated with licensing is problematic.

I read HN multiple times a day and I feel like I'd have to go out of my way to find a post that was political, or even a comment that was political. Yes people will go off about anything NIMBYism, housing markets, javascript saturation etc, but what are the numbers? How much politics is really going on here?

Admittedly I'm probably at the point where I don't even see it when it's right in front of me, but it would be interesting to here from the mods of people who frequent /new.

Can we have an Amazon/AWS "news" detox week, too? :D

Ha ! well it seems Amazon is launching a lot of services lately so I think it's news worthy to discuss their implication, pricing ...

Those news were due to the Amazon's event. They shouldn't be that common in the next weeks. Same thing happens around the google i/o and apple's announcement events.

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.

My biggest concern is the question of what is politics? Surely partisan political issues are politics, but is the position of women in tech also politics? Is climate science? I can see good arguments in either direction. The problem, then, is that it places too much power in the hands of those who answer the question of whether something is politics or not.

HN is already pretty bad at silencing opinions outside the groupthink common wisdom; I think this would just make it worse.

This is all well and good unless this happens to be the week our government passes a law to require muslims to register, etc.

Considering the low quality of political discussion in general (and especially on the internet), HN is one of the few places where there are generally reasonable, well-thought-out views.

Obviously YC doesn't want HN to discuss politics because it could create a divisive atmosphere and alienate people, resulting in lower levels of engagement and harm to the YC brand.

There's at least some reason to believe that discretion won't be completely discarded.

This is slightly off topic, but I think what would be interesting if someone would build a website with news that are actually _actionable_ by readers. So no politicians saying this or that, no crimes or disasters, no gossip. On the other hand, they would carry things like events that you can attend, petitions you can sign, rallies that you can participate in, items/services you can actually buy (as opposed to things you can buy next week), and so on.

So I love Condorcet's works .... on voting. Nothing politics ... just maths.

So I love Plato's work on SiFi hypothesis : what it means to be invsible and the implication on moralilty (cf privacy) ... just philosophy.

So I love Jeremy Bentham nerdy works of architecture on how to build perfect jails where the one in power can watch everything the others do without being watched ... just architecture.

Finally, I love Gary Gigax (D&D) quote : evil (or politic) is in the eye of the beholder!

I like this experiment, so long as we can have exceptions for obviously relevant new material, i.e. "Trump advocates backdoor for Linux kernel" or some such.

Thanks. I stop reading facebook because I've grown so tired of the political posts and comments. As for reddit, thankfully I can filter out political reddits now.

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.

I had always seen HN as a place where people curious about technology, culture and society share article links and comment about them. The moderation is what makes it work. I really do not see why censorship (or detox if you prefer) on political matters should be necessary. if HN really needs this, it might even mean that its audience needs to be educated. And if that is the case it might mean the level you get in here is deemed to decline.

I wish we could do this on the Internet for a week (or more).

While it is fine that you have decided to no longer be news or for hackers, that means I don't care to continue reading this. Hackers are supposed to question the systems they're presented with, and news is supposed to deal with the issues of the day--political news and computer news are linked inextricably these days. The idea of removing one is asinine, this is not the proper community for it. Lobsters is good.

Can you please give specific examples of what "politics" entails, aside from the obvious (so we know where to draw the line)?

For example, as of writing, the #3 post is " Silicon Valley’s Culture, Not Its Companies, Dominates in China (nytimes.com)". I would classify this as political, but others might not.

--EDIT-- I would also classify this front page post as (internally) political: "Dear JavaScript (medium.com)"

Experimenting it just 1 week cannot hurt. That said, defining the scope of what should be banned is tricky. Exemple on recent Amazon Go article and the so famous "Is massive automation implying jobs removing a good thing" : This question is not about politics but will led to "tribal behaviour" as you call it. Will you also ban such debates? If so where is your censor power limit?

Does this include local bay area news (housing discussion etc)? A lot of that can be borderline political but still very relevant to startuppers.

Considering the consistent nature of at least one very prominent YCombinator staff member (leader) inserting themselves into political and/or low-rent gossipy slap-fights, I can both appreciate the "sentiment" or "rationale" behind a Detox Week on HN, and concurrently derisively laugh at the ignorant hypocrisy deploying such an edict reflects in practice.

I mean, yeah I get it's probably a lot of work to moderate all the political related discourse and keep the lanes wide enough for a lot of different voices, but it's the catch that comes with having a "community" in the first place.

If this is the first of a series of "experiments" I wonder which other "conflicts" might "cause harm here" - Identity Discussions? Health care in the US? As cheap as it might sound to pull out a slippery-slope card here, it seems rather apropos.

I get a lot of flack for it here, but if you don't think Politics and Tech are coiled together in significant ways - eg. DMCA and Copyright - then you're just ignorant, childish, and a fool. SV and tech culture is actively using the "Political System" just like every other special interest. Pretending there's some kind of effin' halo over the Hacker News community where such conversations are "below" or "too conflict loaded" then just shut down the forum altogether.

Man discovers fire. Man burns self. Man puts out fire. The end.

> If this is the first of a series of "experiments" I wonder which other "conflicts" might "cause harm here" - Identity Discussions? Health care in the US?

Aren't those just subset off politics?

Not from a technology perspective - if Health Care research like Stem Cells or Generic Drugs can be wielded like political discussion weapons, in spite of their STEM roots, then does that make them off limits now too? Or finding a genetic marker which might have Sexual Orientation implications. Controversy and discussion are bedfellows, and wanting the latter devoid of the former is childish.

I disagree.

Detox will not strengthen the immune system of HN.

Immunity is conferred when the 'garden' is threatened and unifies to counter a problem.

That problem? Inflammatory, unsubstantiated comments that cause people to upvote and downvote not based on the validity of the comment but whether it's favorable to their ideological values.

I believe people can have civilized discussions about politics in HN -- I've seen it before.

If you think political conflicts cause harm, maybe you should change how you approach conflict rather than pretending it doesn't exist?

Sounds like a worthwhile enough experiment. And at the risk of sounding political: what better time than now?

Either way, we'll see how it goes.

The downvotes on this illustrate the point of dang's experiment.

Are you trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist except for the most hardcore HN users?

Because I haven't lately noticed much of the phenomenon you're talking about. And in the first 3 pages I just skimmed over, I didn't see anything that was so political as to be flamewar fodder.

Are you sure you're not trying to solve a problem that your average user doesn't even have?

Not sure what to think about this in the context of HN. I've seen other such stances in other communities where it just ends up being a way to enforce/preserve a political bias. Where some stories get a pass for special reasons "oh, this is noteworthy, and from a credible source!", it's just laughable. I hope this doesn't happen here.

I feel this is oddly appropriate.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13111026

http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/no-neutral-ground-burn...

We could, I dunno, talk about tech, I suppose ...

Thank you!

After seeing this, I just had to post this (btw I think it's probably a good idea). This clip is kind of a funny metaphor for what I tend to see in comment threads about many topics, but politics especially:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj_ghGKy1PY

I don't know why we couldn't have voted on this. Whether it's a good idea or not, trying to impose something so broad on a community of hackers is an exercise in masochism.

I agree with everyone who has said that we're capable of making up our own minds about what to talk about. I don't think political discussions were ever a problem

Voting? Why that sounds positively political of you.

It's probably a good move. Of course I wish we could have intelligent, calm discussions - if not of political ideals per se, then of the peripheral issues like polling, voting machines, etc. But political rage and snark always get injected. And more subtly, individual biases are smuggled in under reasonable sounding language.

Well, the week's up. Personally HN lost its spark for me over the past week so I hope this experiment ends swiftly. I'm sure I'm not the only progressive ready to jump ship if it doesn't - if HN wants to protect Trump supporters' feelings from the devastation many of us are feeling then fine but goodbye.

No force is affecting the sociopolitical landscape more than technology. Ignoring this weakens the community.

Carl Sagan, Buckminster Fuller, Thoreau, MLK and many others all spoke about how our technological development is far outpacing our sociopolitical development, to our own demise.

Arbitrarily attempting to censor and separate the two is grossly negligent.

Politics is not discrete.

While I agree that posts about election results or political leadership changes are mostly unrelated to topics I come to HN to read about, I think that there are many ostensibly political posts that are very relevant (e.g. Snowden or Wikileaks related posts). I would hope that they will not be subject to exclusion.

I disagree with this. Trying to divorce issues related to the tech industry from HN is irresponsible. We can't bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best.

Purely political posts rarely make it to the front page anyway. And having those discussions in comments is what comments are there for.

The only thing I'm going to flag is this post.

I don't have a lot to say, except that I support this measure and wanted to comment so that's in the record.

I think a political detox week is a bad idea. What some see as gratification for their intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive commentaries and seen by others as political rants and flames. I much prefer a larger world view and a thoughtful "fire department" to quell flames when they get out of hand.

Here's an article that was on the front page when I clicked into this discussion:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/librarians-act-now-pro...

Is this political?

For the purposes of this week, surely yes.

Can we have an objective criteria with which to judge which comments/stories are political?

Examples would be helpful as well...

Statements like this are exactly the reason why I have always been hesitant about having a relationship with Y Combinator. Reminders to be courteous are welcome, but a ban of political "stories" is completely inappropriate especially at a time when minority voices are already consistently silenced.

Who says you get to ask why? No, really!

If hacker news is getting political, that is a function of it's users ( and the social climate ). A community is built by its members. For better or worse.

Work on addressing the issues that make the discourse toxic. What does covering the sun with the censorship finger actually accomplish?

I would argue that any startup or financial news is political, in that politics shapes the capitalist foundation of our society. HN is Politics, and to try and separate and moderate this type of news is exactly the kind of thing that makes people leave your site in droves.

If you define politics as including everything, then everything is political. That doesn't make it a useful definition, though.

I just saw a story about Paul Allen resurrecting a CDC 6500 supercomputer. Yes, that took place in an environment where politics shapes the capitalist foundation of our society, and that's where Paul Allen got the money to be able to do that. It takes an extreme stretch to call that a political story, though...

The metaphor is good and the approach and description is actually great. The challenge is that this issue doesn't only happen in the political domain, it can happen in the philosophical and intellectual domains too via the cultural competition (AKA cultural war)

This is a mistake. The sort of problems we have in the US can't be solved with censorship and earplugs. If anything, we need more conversation, not less.

Ditto to the many commenters who point out that nothing is apolitical and that such censorship would be subjective anyway.

Don't do this.

I was planning to delay the point when I get to know who the winner was on the elections... (I live in Europe) In work nobody speaks about politics. I don't read traditional news sites. I was just curious who will tell me first. Then I opened Hacker News...

I'll never understand why people act like a forum is a TV channel. Can't people just hide threads, or avoid topics that don't interest them? It's not like HN only has one discussion at a time and that politics has crowded out other topics.

And when the experiment is over, please remember ... If you don't like political posts, they're usually obvious and you don't have to read (or upvote) them. The front page goes by slowly enough that the news you like won't get crowded out.

This is a bad idea. I don't know how you managed to convince yourself that it's not.

I like this idea as a short-term experiment. Here's another in the same vein: stories with voting enabled but comments disabled. Kind of like a focus group where you just listen to others, without jumping in to assert your own viewpoints.

Given the political issues that are of extreme interest to people here that aren't toxic (crypto backdoors, h1b, etc), why not modify the rule to be "no election discussion, broadly defined" rather than "no politics"?

I'd rather there be some kind of isolation of political discussion rather than an outright ban for a week.

Maybe just have a permanent/rotating "politics/culture/society" thread for people to share whatever?

As an experiment and a temporary detox, I am all for it. Totally worth testing. But something to keep in mind is that politics is something that needs the help HN community can provide with a thoughtful discussion

What happens if something incredibly important happens during this week in politics, is it simply not up for discussion at all? For example, what happens if a world leader is assassinated or a conflict breaks out?

What's considered political and what's considered non-political?

Can we discuss ethics? Is saying "racism is bad" political?

What about facts? "Torture is ineffective" or "carbon emissions harm the planet"?

Aye-aye sir. I'll be following the new rule with enthusiasm, actually. It'll be nice to have fewer discussions of $POLITICAL_THING_RUINING_THE_WORLD and more about interesting stuff like OpenAI.

We live in a political world. Any attempt for the HN community to bisect the set of stories that make up our everyday experience will only illustrate the political bias of the aggregate opinion.

Technology is inherently political, you cannot separate hackers from politics, and to try is a fools errand.

That being said, I think I understand where this is coming from, so I have empathy with dang and the hn team about it, but I disagree with this move on principle, especially now, at a time when some very important techno-political moves are being made.

For example, the FBI now claims to have the ability to use 0-days to hack thousands of computers on a single search warrant! It's completely unconstitutional, and that is a huge deal, technologically, and politically, that I haven't seen addressed by any crowd very well, and it's the kind of discussion HN needs to have, not to avoid. To suddenly have a non-political week when some of the most important things, time sensitive things, are happening right now is not good at all.

The timing of this also feels suspicious, and there is something else that feels suspicious to me as well, and that's the algorithm that controls what is on the front page. I've seen repeatedly, enough to no longer call it just coincidence, that stories of techno-political important, like the FBI one, get ~250/500+ points and have ~100/300 comments, that are completely off the front page long before is normal for more mundane stuff. I think the hn userbase deserve more transparency on this front.

HN is an American based forum, so while I understand the want to lean towards a type of globalistic technocratic neutrality, I think that is a mistake and fails to take into account the primary user-base, and I think the hackers and geeks of the world, but in particular America, have a duty to participate in the political discussion that is going to be needed to steer policy of our American system, because the revolutionary nature of technology is quickly getting out of control for ordinary citizens and politicians, and our system impacts the rest of the world.

We need more politics, not less, but we need it in the unique HN style where people can have good manners on the discourse, which is much more conducive to intellectual conversation than just about any other internet forum I can think of other than slashdot in it's heyday.

With the increasing totalitarian surveillance society that we as hackers have handed to the politicians through technology, I think we have a duty to also protect the citizen-victims of our technology run amok in the hands of others. We can't, and shouldn't, hand a technological nuclear weapon to nation states and just walk away and say, but we just want to talk about the technology of the thing. It's a naive and fundamentally flawed process of thinking. I also think it's time for the HN team and it's users to have a more serious discussion about how they want to participate in the future of the internet, and the dystopian society it is enabling, piece by piece.

I also have a single question for the HN team:

Have you been pressured by the US government in any way shape or form on this subject?

In protest of this move, I will not be participating on HN until the week is up.

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?

No need; the new 'hide' feature lets me ignore all that for days at a time. The flamers are burning somewhere, but I don't see it and I don't get singed.

Hacker News: the place were conservative viewpoints are not welcome.

It's not discourse here. It's we shoot the messenger if they don't agree with us on everything.

I welcome the detox.

This'll be interesting. What defines "political topics"?

Is climate change news political? Edward Snowden news? Wikileaks? A new build of the Signal app? Hyperloop news?

Yay, my five year old request for a moratorium (though it was for 2 months, not just a week...) is being honored. :) But really thanks for trying it, I hope it does good.

It is such a great privilege that to some people, politics is just noise that you can turn off.

To some people, their livelihood and survival are on line based on what our politicians do.

I like the experiment, even if I am not too fond of the idea. However it is 2016, so is there a procedure when politics becomes very clearly relevant in the coming week?

I have a permanent solution to the "politics problem": require all comments be cryptographically signed, and give users the tools to rate the signing keys.

I 100% support this and would like to see it made permanent.

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruGBWLk9s8

That's a shame. I don't want to see Hacker News become reddit, with anything that has the slightest chance of upsetting someone being banned.

http://hastrumpmadeamericagreatagainyet.com/

Making an "is politics / is not politics" judgement is itself a political act. The goal itself is sort of impossible-in-principle.

Much needed

How about not using the words liberal/conservative/Democrat/ Republican/socialist/racist and discuss issues instead?

I'm done. If I could delete my account I would.

Uh oh! Now you've really thrown down the gauntlet! If the message forum has an immune system, you're one tough white blood cell.

Is there data (say a drastically increased flag rate, number of flame wars, etc.) that show that today is different than 2 months ago?

I thought this was already every week on HN. There are very few politics related articles. Pushing the point is a bit much IMO.

There's a lot more than appears on the front page, and many of those threads turn into flamewars that go on a long time. You can see them at /active (from /lists linked at the bottom of each page) if you want to.

For me Hacker News is the only source of news. I know that major events are surfacing anyway - I want them to keep surfacing.

being outside US, I strongly support this. I couldn't care less about who leads team america world police, it's all the same anyway. HN is my tech news site, and politics is just a distraction. I understand that US citizens feel strongly about their government, but it's not really tech news.

I think this is paternalistic. Individual readers can avoid political topics if they don't want to engage.

avoiding what is coming is no way to critically think..its like say oh holding technology to this loft position without acknowledging jobs due to technology progress and government's lack of solutions..

The flames,etc are symptoms..and this is just as bad..

We need a somewhat deeper solution and the discussion of one...

What metrics are you planning on using to measure the results of this experiment?

I'm all for it, yay experiments!

Wish you'd wait til voting machine tapering allegations were cleared, but hey, go nuts.

I appreciate the sentiment but I fear a slippery slope. What counts as "politics"?

when one of the most significant figures in politics right now uses twitter as their platform for communicating with their support base, for better or worse, the idea of being politics agnostic just seems silly.

> Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient ...

Agreed. I've been thinking about how communities can handle this problem for awhile. A solution to it would be revolutionary, in a very good way for the entire Internet, and what better place to experiment with and develop a solution than HN. Here's my over-ambitious shot at a solution, based only on experience in online communities:

------------------------

I propose that we have different rules, much higher standards for commenting, for hot button issues. When these situations come up, our moderators could post something like,

  ** Hot button rules apply **

(Or make up a different name: 'Cool head rules' 'Ice down rules' 'Rationality'?) For those issues, the guidelines would add the following and be strictly enforced:

----

1) Be precise: Who? Did? What?

Who should be a proper noun; only individuals (and in some cases, specific organizations like 'Acmesoft') actually have thoughts, motives, and perform actions; groups do none of those things - we are not hive minds. This eliminates lazily broad statements with huge implications that provoke anger and fear, stereotype large groups, and don't make us any better informed. 'Tennesseans hate Kentuckyians' doesn't inform anyone - there is nothing all Tennesseans agree on, and nobody can possibly read all their minds, and we know nothing more after reading it than we did before - but '60% of Tennesseans who responded to this survey say they have stopped visiting Kentucky' is fine.

Did: HN readers mostly grasp empirical science and should be able to understand: Only actions are observable, not other people's thoughts and feelings - though you can observe what they say about their thoughts.

What, used precisely, eliminates sloppy characterizations. 'Tennessee Governor Jane Jones despises Kentucky BBQ.' No, what actually happened? 'Tennessee Governor Jane Jones said, "I despise seeing Kentucky BBQ taking jobs from hardworking Tennessee chefs."'

Finally, Be precise also means: No hyperbole.

----

2) Context is required: Where and when

Where and when are essential context. Think of your high school writing guidelines: Who, what, where, when, etc. 'Tennessee Governor Jane Jones said, "I despise seeing Kentucky BBQ taking jobs from hardworking Tennessee chefs."': It is essential to know when she said that (1985? 2010? Before the Kentucky-Tennessee trade war began or after?) and where (On a campaign stop in a TN BBQ restaurant? The title of a book? A tweet? A warm-up joke for a speech?); otherwise, we have no idea what really happened.

----

3) Back it up:

The burden of proof is much higher, and on the commenter: Respected scholarly research (not someone's self-published book) or highly respected news media, and not in a column or editorial. Wikipedia's Reliable Source rules may help here, but with higher standards for sources (and also actually applied here; Wikipedia articles often ignore the standards).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

----

4) Be 100% respectful, as if talking to someone important to you whom you respect. No exceptions; no grey areas; stay well away from this line.

----

5) The only idea we don't tolerate is intolerance itself. See Karl Popper's Paradox of Intolerance if you want to go deeper on this. Or a simpler way to approach it: Tolerance is a social contract - you tolerate me and I'll tolerate you.

----

6) These rules apply to anyone you quote, also. You can't say 'Kentuckians suck', and you can't quote someone else saying it (except to talk about the quoted person's habit of broad stereotypes).

----

Comments violating these guidelines are immediately, mercilessly killed dead. Busy moderators may not have time to explain why, but in most cases you can find the reason(s) here pretty easily. Feel free to rewrite according to the guidelines and try again.

------------------------

By now you may be thinking: 'With those standards, I won't have much to say on inflammatory topic X!' or 'Those will be much shorter threads!' or 'I'd really need some good information and think it through in order to comment!' Good; you understand. Imagine if we restricted those discussions to only valuable, informative content. The contents of the threads could actually advance our knowledge about inflammatory, often very important, issues. It's almost hard conceive of. We could actually, in the heat of an issue, advance rational public discussion - a goal that has seemed so intractable that it's almost forgotten; it seems almost fanciful. The perfect challenge.

It also eliminates the prominent problem of people making endless wild allegations for others to refute (see rule #3 - they must back up what they post). So instead of endlessly repeating the same low-value information back and forth, we'd actually gain real knowledge from each other. And if some threads are very short, then what have we lost? A bunch of low-value comments from uniformed commenters? Ideological rants? Things we've heard a thousand times before? It even will save some disk space and bandwidth, and reduce page load times.

Finally, if it works - which not at all a sure thing and will require fine-tuning at the very least - the concept could be used by other online communities. What we develop here - not software, but guidelines for community interaction - it could change the world, in a way that it badly needs and longs for.

Interesting idea.

One hitch perhaps: topics that start off non-political but veer into politics … happens often enough.

A more democratic way would be for the community to either enable the hot-buttoning or be able to disable it with enough flagging.

When you think about it you're suggesting something akin to Wikipedia's sensitive page rules where extremely divisive pages are locked down and subject to higher scrutiny.

Isn't there already a flamewar detector that penalizes threads? Couldn't it also, probably earlier, trigger the "hot-button" rules and notification?

Could we have a banner that makes this well-know?

This isn't top of HN right now.

Yeah, and we can have safer sex too if we just don't have sex.

I think I'll just take a break from HN for one week instead.

Overall, I think this is a good idea, but it probably needs to be made more precise for it to work. What is a political topic, exactly? Are IETF politics off-topic this week? What about advice for NSA employees trying to pull a Snowden?

Growing up

Religion Sex Politics

All "no nos"

Still Good Advice!!

Now I add

Money, abortion, Hitler, the holocaust, child care, and elder care.

Thank you! I hope we can still talk about Leonard Cohen though.

Good luck with that :-) everything is political with a small p

I love this experiment!

I guess that covers posting articles from the economist too?

The title could have been: Let's make HN great again!

Question: does that include startup relevant law changes?

if this is happening, could we have a weekly political thread?

(kind of like how we have monthly who's hiring thread)

That way we can have the cake and eat it too.

I want to register my disgust at this suggestion.

might as well declare 'emotion detox week' and bury everything not written by robots.

this decision is actively contributing to erosion of the free world, as if not talking about politics makes them go away. hint: it's not and technology and hackers are changing the world so much politics necessarily enters the debate and it just can't be worked around.

ps. is uber breaking labor laws around the world politics or not?

"Uber breaks labour laws" maybe okay.

"Uber breaks labour laws, and that's why we need Clinton" not okay

"Uber breaks labour laws, and that's why we need Trump" not okay.

Not a bad idea.

Nice idea in the current climate. If we now also stopped talking about religion, we'd have a freemason-like room for open conversation.

A "safe space" if you will.

I disagree but those are the rules.

> Ok, have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we'll try to allay them.

Want to share your specific concerns?

This 'detox' is an equivocation, that both sides are somehow equally at fault. That is most definitely NOT the case and shushing everyone up about it will not make this go away, garden or not.

Who are these sides specifically? The US Left and Right?

that both sides are somehow equally at fault. That is most definitely NOT the case

I've seen uncivil behavior well-represented here on HN from across the political spectrum(s).

God, where was this two weeks ago?

Six months ago. US election shit is seemingly endless.

What about non-American politics?

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.

I've been around since the day pg announced Startup News on his blog (though not as a moderator of course), so I doubt that's true.

HN is a complex system of community, software, and moderation. We like to place the emphasis on community too, but those other things also have their places.

Good idea.

I'm glad you didn't announce this last week. Then it would have been AWS articles only!

I wonder if this policy would be coming down the pipe of Madame President were elected..

Next up, Rilke week? ;)

I hope that includes stories about alleged racism and sexism in the tech industry...

Politics? Are we referring to Clinton versus Trump or vi versus emacs? :-)

There's no such thing as a "non-political" story.

Loved the detox. Decided to extend it to the rest of the year!

only if we do a no tech week after that :)

This will be my final comment on HN.

As my parting words from this site, I would ask that you please pay close attention to what is happening politically with regard to the laws which shape technology: the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Criminal Rule of Procedure 41, PATRIOT Act 215, FISA 702, and Executive Order 12333, but just as importantly, the individuals in the NSC, DNI, DCIA, DNSA and DIA/DCS leadership positions.

Community members, remember it is crucial for engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs to have a voice in the forthcoming discussions of digital privacy, the extent of state power, and the policies that will be chosen. If you wish to conduct this experiment, perhaps a different time period would be better, as these officials are being chosen now, and the policies will be decided very soon.

Moderators, I ask you to use your power judiciously, and allow the maximum free discourse that you feel appropriate. Remember that you yourselves are not immune to the cognitive defects inherent in human nature. If you do adopt a more narrow curation policy, please guard against those passions carefully. Protect well this place you have built. It is more special than you realize.

Founders, design your technologies with an eye to how they shape public discourse, promote fact, and expose deception. Be better than my generation. Pursue ideals more noble than mere monetary profit. Don't just make something people want. Make something that matters.

Build the change you wish to see in the world. You did not risk everything to sell digital sugar water.

Others of greater tact than I will shape these discussions as they evolve here. But I myself will not abet censorship without objection, particularly at this moment in time. The time has come to vote with my feet. It has been a pleasure to know you all.

I wish you well in the days to come.

politics.ycombinator.com?

Hear, hear!

So I assume this means that yc is now concerned over alienating a certain political party/faction that tends to have a lot of money but not a lot of support among college grads.

And as many others have said, this is a horrible idea. ESPECIALLY for a site oriented toward start-ups (or, at least, people who like to talk about start-ups). Guess who is going to be signing off on the regulations that determine what is and isn't allowed? Guess who is going to determine where research money goes and what gets subsidies or tax breaks?

Oh yeah, that thing which you don't want anyone to discuss.

A few years old and more geared toward HPC and scientific computing, but Michio Kaku gave a great talk at SC about how politics and lobbying are very important and are actually vital and that if technology wants to advance it needs to not plug its ears and hide but actually be involved and fight for our interests.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_MbkVozydE

Rather than sit around, gazing at our navels, and talking about how amazingly smart and above it all we all are maybe, just maybe, people should actually consider "disrupting" the world into an "agile" state that can actually result in a government and laws that aren't a hindrance. And you sure as sugar don't get that by talking about how nobody else knows how to communicate with anyone because they aren't "hackers".

But hey, gotta make sure you don't alienate anyone who might be a good business partner.

---

Maybe, just maybe, enforce rules about not making emotional and unfounded posts. Because that is largely independent of politics and is the kind of thing that makes it hard to take this place seriously as a "meeting of the minds" and mostly causes it to feel like "A marginally less meme filled reddit".

I think this moment officially marks the point at which the American tech industry disappeared up its own asshole.

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 shortly thereafter on our way back to our apartment.

The new National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, endorsed the totally false rumors that led to this shooting. He will soon be empowered by the full force of the nation's intelligence agencies.

I want you to very carefully consider the implications of what he could do with access to that power, and the potential result of blocking discussion of such issues, particularly at this moment in time.

I think the question is not whether the issues are important, it's whether they're on-topic right here. Your example is meaningful but that doesn't mean it should be discussed on Reddit under /r/comics or /r/cooking. Since HN doesn't have categories/subreddits, I think there's a diverging sense of what readers want to find when they come here.

The topic of this thread is the policy of banning political comments for one week. I stated that the experiment should not be conducted at this time, due to the forthcoming appointment of a government official, which HN should discuss given yesterday's events. It was certainly relevant on this thread.

I didn't mean it wasn't relevant to this thread (which gets a pass for being meta), I meant "here" as in "would you submit a story about this on HN".

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 feel this is a fair assumption. I'm not saying no one here could shoot a gun in public, but they wouldn't come here as anything but a complete troll and shoot a gun based on some crap story like that. If I'm wrong in this then the experiment is terrible and stop it now. But I very much doubt it.

3) The issue is that news in general has degraded. This degradation of journalism has led to many of the issues we experience today. If experimenting on HN can lead to some sort of anecdotal evidence that Politics = bad for communities I'm all for it. I believe part of the issue is pointed to in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4 24 Hours news is the issue. 24 Hours politics is the issue. Taking a purge is a great idea.

4) HN should not be where you get your news about politics.

"The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I feel this is a fair assumption"

The systems on which that person read the false information that drove them to shoot the gun were built by people who read HN. That may sound like a lot of levels of indirection, but to ignore politics for a week seems like a symptom of pretending that we are not a part of the problem.

I think the technology running the web needs to be thought of as a part of the fourth estate. We are not separate from the media which we have restructured.

While I think that we should use every tool at our disposal to work to mitigate disasters like the one you mention, I also don't think it's on Technology to fix this issue itself. Facebook isn't the cause of people being stupid, people are. This is not a new issue and it is not something that the people who read this site are responsible for.

It is also an experiment. I'd like to emphasize that. It is an experiment. It is OK to not get politics on HN for a week. It will not be the cause of a global meltdown in society.

I'm also pretty confident that if some ground breaking news broke about Donald Trump wanting to launch a nuclear weapon that dang would allow that, but the current noise that is happening can be removed for a week is a good experiment.

As an experiment it is interesting, and there certainly community management is hard. Also, I think that better community management is maybe some of the problem on Facebook and Twitter, so there is quite a bit of irony in me arguing against it.

But...

The media and technology revolution that we are both living through and shaping with the technologies that we deploy should be something that we actively discuss and wrestle with. I've recently been reading more history of the impact of the printing press (scientific revolution, monarchy => democracy, reformation, and a lot of war).

"This is not a new issue and it is not something that the people who read this site are responsible for."

I could not disagree more strongly. The web is quite new, and we don't understand its impact on society. Certainly the people on this site are not entirely responsible for it, but I think that we should feel some responsibility for it. I certainly do.

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.

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.

OK I'd go on and emphasize. 1) 1) 1) 1).

It is an experiment. That's a good thing. Let's talk about solving Fake News in a week. If they try to ban politics on HN in a week I'll get up in arms with you.

3) perpetuated by the users of software distributed by giant tech companies

To finish up: It is an experiment.

1. This experiment is directly harmful in that it is using living subjects, without ethics review.

2. The person who shot the gun was informed by Reddit, a company that had it's genesis here. The Y Combinator is a function that makes other functions.

The Internet is not like a blank canvas. The decisions we make about a platform, about news optimization, and about community structure affect our public discourse. If Twitter had set it's character limit at 280 characters, that would have had a profound effect on the marketplace of ideas in the public sphere.

3. The issue is that the particular forms of communication which enabled these thought-bubbles to exist were created by a handful of decisions by software developers.

4. HN is where I get my news about technology. Technology is a crucial area of political discussion, and right now the very basic freedoms of the internet are under direct threat from political forces.

Finally, how could anything be more crucial to technologists than discussion of those who will hold the reigns of the national security sector?

1) No it is not going to harm it's living subjects. That is complete hyperbole. You having to go somewhere else for your news for a week will not affect you. Sweet baby Jesus. Seriously?

2) The person was informed by the hive mind of a subreddit that reddit allows. I mean look at what happened when the Steve went and edited user data on Reddit. We talk about not wanting censorship, but then we blame technologies that don't sensor for having toxic communities. How do you find out if the community or the individual is to blame? Would you perform an Experiment?

3) Software has perpetuated the thought bubble issue, this is one thing I can think of being introduced to society purely by software so I agree on this point.

4) Which is why I think after the experiment we should go back to politics on HN.

> Finally, how could anything be more crucial to technologists than discussion of those who will hold the reigns of the national security sector?

I get my political news from other sources, I'd suggest anyone reading this does too.

It's the evaluation of the experiment that I am most worried about. How do you evaluate a decrease in people being exposed to diversity of opinion? How do you evaluate how many articles are willfully suppressed but might have been lead to good discussion?

I am afraid that potential benefits of this policy are easier to measure (I.e. less flame wars) and the bad parts are not (less deep and critical discussion), we will lead to the conclusion that it is better to keep such a policy in place without a good sense of what we are losing in the process.

anthony bourdain was in rome telling an apolitical friend how america had embraced "fascism" by electing a leader who "promised to make america great again". she quickly reminded him that the last leader we elected did the exact same thing.

I want to be clear about three aspects of this:

1. Any views expressed here or elsewhere on HN are purely my own and not representative of the United States government or any other entity.

2. This is not about one individual act of violence. It is symptomatic of a culture created by the types of technology we discuss and implement. I happen to know many people within various spheres that do read HN, and are influenced by it.

3. This comment was flagged, which seems contrary to the purpose of inviting a public discussion, particularly on the thread regarding the appropriateness of such discussions on this site.

If we can't even express dissent that we can't express dissent, that is a problem.

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.

The community was asked whether there were specific concerns regarding the timing of the experiment. I expressed a particular, relevant, and time sensitive issue, which yes, happened to deal with a particular individual.

These issues can't be discussed in a vacuum. This is the person who is openly promoting a Muslim registry, and intends to use the technology we have built to do it. There is no ground to be apolitical in that context, particularly when you have just seen first hand evidence of the violence it portends.

I submit that, if people were firing assault rifles into pizza places in your neighborhood because of "politics," you might feel differently.

The controls on the usage of national security programs, as we know, are today largely governed by the discretion of the people in charge, much like your discretion governs comments here.

It's fine if you don't consider that acceptable discourse anymore. It's your sandbox. But if that's the case, I'm taking taking my toys and going home. I know what censorship looks like when I see it.

Worst of all dang, I though I could trust you guys to be better than this...

> Have at this in the thread

What rule was broken?

You can't have a discussion about these issues without getting to brass tacks at some point.

Even setting aside how this effectively encourages the status quo: you are functionally telling women and minorities not to relate their own experiences for fear of being branded as "political" and getting flagged for it. That's bad. That's real bad. When somebody like 'tptacek says he's on-board with this because he thinks that 97.99% of politics on HN are alt-right trolling...maybe there's a problem here that isn't "politics".

I generally regard the proprietorship here with good faith even when I disagree 'cause you have always been fair and straight with concerns I've thrown your way, but this is an unmistakably dark message you're sending to your community--a message that works very much to the favor of the white supremacists who are actively pissing in your pool around here.

HN has long gone from being dedicated just to programming and tech news. Why is it just now that you want it to be so "on-topic"?

In turbulent times like these, with hate speech, racism and sexism out of the shadows and in it's highest, it is crucial to be having conversations.

Being silent, burying head in the sand - not much different than siding on the side of the oppressor.

Whatever news are posted here - is a reflection of a community. If politics are posted, that is what people read. Instead, concentrate your efforts to battle those who game your algorithms for rankings.

HN was never dedicated just to "programming and tech news"—not from the day it was named, and this has been in the first paragraph of the site guidelines since forever: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. So that's not the issue. The issue is that this site exists for the gratification of intellectual curiosity, and political battle not only threatens that but runs roughshod over it. I tried to make this clear in what I posted above.

> HN is a garden

and Attila is going to trample all over it.

I really welcome this move. I couldn't get out of bed on Nov 9th and a few hours of introspection later, I realized I have no control over any of the Political changes and that I shouldn't be causing myself so much stress.

So I stopped watching the news -- both online and on TV -- since Nov 9th. It's been an incredible month for me since then.

I've made significant progress on my languishing side-projects ( a Show HN coming soon in Jan 2017!!!) and am generally less stressed and more mindful and happy.

I made a conscious effort to stop watching news and ride out the next 8 years (I expect Trump, like Dubya, will get Re-elected in 2020). I still need my "tech" fix, and visit only HN since I gave up the news. Yet I found a few Trump stories on HN recently, so this is a great move.

Thanks mods!

Thank you for taking advantage of that introspection. it must feel weird when you first realize that approximately half the population disagrees with you.

I believe that, if more people in the United States felt the way you did, we could have world peace in a generation.

Actually, the entire population disagrees with you, about something. The "realization" is that a lot of the things we disagree about, are actually kind of boring.

I hope you recognize that you can only opt out of being stressed about politics because you're not on the receiving end. :/

> because you're not on the receiving end.

Nope. I actually am at the receiving end. 2 of my cousins are married to illegal aliens (both Mexican women) and 1 couple has a child born here (so citizen).

Still I had a moment of clarity when I realized that

1) Trump was indeed Democratically elected, and 2) I don't gain anything by fretting over and stressing over after reading 1 bad news after another about his policies, because I really can't do anything as a single person (unless, of course, I make 1 issue my life long pursuit, then it's different).

I've chosen to focus on my Circle of Control and reduce or altogether eliminate my Circle of Concern

Related Reading: Circle of Control vs Circle of Concern: => http://www.jdroth.com/images/circle-concern-control.jpg

An excellent choice.

Perhaps I shouldn't comment without having more to add, but I just wanted to support this very healthy perspective. It is a much calmer way to go through life, and not limited to politics!

Thanks for the graphic.

For anyone else, the original article discussing the graphic: is here [0].

[0] http://www.jdroth.com/becoming-proactive/

Interestingly I had my moment of clarity when I realized my Circle of Control can be far larger than what I had believed it to be.

Most humans believe in your viewpoint, but the truth is power is gained from groups. We are all simply a node in a larger network. Accepting and embracing that is the key to growing the Circle of Control. Becoming part of the right network alters the Circle of Control of the individual.

Don't get mad, get organized.

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 HN leadership doesn't like will be censored?

This is censorship pure and simple. Shame on you Dang for even suggesting it, my question is:

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

If yes, we shouldn't even have this kind of thread. Let trolls be flagged but everyone else having meaningful discussion should not be collectively punished.

> 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.

> Censorship is where you can't say something in any (public) outlet.

HN is a public outlet, anyone is free to register and participate in the discussion. The thread is soliciting the community to censor themselves with a pretty vague and large blanket under "politics".

HN is run by an American corporation correct, it's servers are in America, then it should follow American values. If this was a Chinese or Russian company, well, their land their rules.

People are freaking out because dang set a precedent for future discourse, the community leadership can declare any topic they deem unsuitable with a pretty vague set of rules and discretion which does not follow a democratic process.

No precedent for future discourse is being set.

It's true that HN doesn't follow a democratic process that way, but it never has, nor pretended to.

There is certainly nothing wrong with a community having a topical focus. This is just an experiment in reorienting the focus back towards its historical orientation. I think you're over-reacting.

I find this part of the main problem with the recent US election. You only want political discussions when you agree with it. No matter how civil a person is, it's considered 'uncivil' when it's against San Francisco politics.

When this happens, many people are forced to get their news from the sites deemed 'fake'. The mass banning of opposing viewpoints (which has been happening for a couple of years now) has pushed more people towards these sites and may have actually won Trump the election. If you want to change it, stop silencing all opposing views.

The problem is that politics is in every part of our lives. If you ban politics and religion, people still get political and religious about other things. It's part of human nature (GNU VS BSD), (VI VS Emacs).

When most people talk about "politics" what they really mean is they want to recite talking points told to them from their favorite dying old media echo chamber.

Reddit went full political and I left. The chans went full political and I left. Facebook went full political and I left. Twitter went full political and I left.

I go on the internet to escape being repeatedly told I'm not doing enough to live up to the moral supremacist standards set by the Baby Boomers in the 1960s.

Nearly every single massive social network on the internet exists and have for a decade to cater to your daily fill of Silicon Valley bicoastal "look down the nose of the flyover plebs" equality porn. Go there for your schadenfreude. Don't bring it here.

Spirituality means having an imaginary friend. Politics means having imaginary enemies.

Why are they allowed, period?

Is the community OK with turning HN into Reddit-lite - because that's clearly what's happening based on the topics that get upvoted.

I really don't think the community is OK with it, but the last year or two has experienced a massive influx of redditors to this site, bringing their "This" posts, and near 4chan-tier of shitposting.

Many of those people now have more than 500 karma, by appealing to the majority opinion, so they're allowed to downvote all they want, skewing the demographics of the site. If you've been here a while, you probably noticed the shift in discourse and submission quality.

It happens with all "Nerd News" sites; they're great at the begining, then the people that shouldn't be here start coming, and the signal-to-noise ratio gets closer to 1:1.

I understand the motives behind this decision but after deliberating for the last two hours I have to say I think it's a bad decision.

HN should stand up for values it believes in, not just tech as if it exists in a vacuum. If HN believes in diversity and LGBT rights, it should stand up for it. If HN believes in corporate deregulation and dismantling of the EPA, it should stand up for it.

The idea that HN is neutral on all these issues is just false. HN is the people who run it. They have views and a vision for the site. What kind of site do they want it to be? Stand up for that vision. People who don't like it can go elsewhere.

Reddit and Twitter and other sites have made a huge mistake in the past allowing racism and hate to fester in their midst. They should have thrown those people off years ago. They have other sites to go to.

Anyway, that's my view. It's time for people to stand up for what they believe in.

> What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive comments.

It's "startup news": computing for capitalism. We work on social media without knowing anything about sociology. We work on advertising, which is corporate propaganda. We have no vision of the future, unlike technologists in a sane world, so we build a dystopian bureaucratic nightmare where I'm literally filling out a form right now.

Anyway, politics is for billionaires.

Good show, I say. Should have gone for a month though, not a week (can't please everyone, eh?)

About 15 years ago I was part of a general forum run by a kiwi, who was frustrated at US politics overtaking his site (which was the bulk of political talk there). He implemented a month-long ban on US politics... and the site got more peaceful and more interesting. The effect lasted afterwards, too, though the userbase was < 100.

When "politics" is treated as "things that affect other people that we opine about", this decision makes sense.

But this decision is the epitome of privilege. To enter a space thinking "I'm not going to think about politics" is to be someone whose sheer existence in that space isn't a political statement in and of itself. And for many, such a space is "The United States", "The Tech Community", "HN", or whatnot.

Saying "We're going to forget y'all for a week" is... just... fucking... terrible. And whoever conceived of it should be fired on the spot.

This is a pretty well-constructed argument, despite the unnecessary invective at the end. It took me a while to figure out how to rebut it. (Therefore I upvoted you to counter expected downvotes.)

But I think it goes like this: there's a difference between not caring about something for a week and not talking about it. If, as you assume, for most of HN politics is "things that affect other people", then the primary objective of political discussions on HN should be to convince those people - not, say, to make the minority which is affected feel validated. My impression is that when people who are affected by something go and read a ton of Very Strong Opinions put forward by people who aren't, the result is usually more invalidating than validating; validation is important but is a purpose better served by more focused communities. Now, when it comes to convincing people, a constant barrage of discussions on the same topic is probably more unhelpful than helpful; at worst, pausing discussions for a week (which gives them time to reflect) is unlikely to be very harmful.

Notwithstanding that, some people may perceive the idea of taking a break as invalidating, because it reminds them of a generalization about the community (not affected) which does not apply to them. However, so far as it's an accurate generalization, this seems like it can't be helped. I suppose you could argue that it seems more accurate than it really is, since marginalized people are present but silenced…

Anyway, I think "things that affect other people" is an oversimplification to start with. A lot of the specific political topics people like to discuss on this site, like encryption/surveillance, have fairly little direct impact on pretty much any of us; others, like the economy, affect all of us to some extent, albeit some more than others.

What you may not be taking into account, though, is that for some of us, "we're not going to allow 'politics' for a week" is being read in context with the years of previous moderation decisions and community signaling about who and what it cares about. And in that light, "we're not going to allow 'politics' for a week" is pretty obviously a decision that upholds the really toxic status quo of HN. (And that's leaving aside the fact that everything is political, because 'politics' includes - among other things - our fundamental assumptions about how the world works, and that's not something people leave behind when they're talking about technology or anything else.)

Hi adrienne :)

This is a fair point and valid data point for how people view it.

Only thing I'd say is, to me the reasoning seems related to a sentiment that's I've seen in a lot of places, that after all the nastiness that's built up through the course of the (very long as usual) US election cycle, it's time for everyone to cool off a bit. So my instinct isn't to tie it that much to anything about HN in particular. Now of course, the same point applies outside of HN - it gets a lot harder to treat Trump as a topic you can just stop talking about when you're more likely to be directly and immediately impacted. And then there's the idea that we shouldn't normalize him by treating him like a normal candidate where, after the election, even if your ideas lost, at least you know there's a modicum of competence and civic-mindedness at the helm… Still, despite all that, despite the fact that I attended a protest myself (just one so far), for me some of the sentiment of wanting to cool off still rings valid. Maybe it shouldn't - but then it's not like we can do anything to change the election result; we're all in this for the long haul…

There's also the fact that "politics" as described by dang covers a lot more than US electoral politics. But the reason for wanting to avoid it is still the influence of US electoral politics on those conversations.

Hi, comex! :)

I definitely understand electoral politics fatigue. We're all having that. But 'dang explicitly said the intended scope of the ban/"detox" is wider than that, over in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614

"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."

So apparently literally anything about race, gender, or class (which are really important issues both in terms of the tech industry and in terms of who technology is for) are considered off-limits for the week. (And at least one relevant story - about big tech companies releasing diversity reports - has already been killed under the policy.) That is one reason I am taking this as such a clear signal of the values of the mods, rather than simply a reaction to election stuff. I could be wrong, of course, but i wanted to try to let you see what i - and many others, i think? - are seeing that concerns us.

Fair enough!

Like, i really do feel unwelcome here. And this "experiment" makes me feel more unwelcome - not because it's an experiment, i'm all in favor of those, but because i really don't think it is one. I think it's a pretty clear signal about what the moderators value, and how they think.

should be fired on the spot

Someone should lose their job for coming up with the idea in an attempt to increase the signal to noise ratio of the site?

If the community as a whole defines signal to be "Which bits are going to flip" and noise to be "How are folks going to put dinner on the table when we flip that bit?", I don't want to be part of that.

The "someone" I'm referring to here almost certainly, in reality, isn't one person. And the "entity" who did this certainly should lose their position -- it's a privilege we've granted them for far too long.

I don't want to be part of that

That's your choice. The importance of Dang and the other moderators to this forum astronomically dwarfs the importance of individuals like yourself or myself.

And no one here is solving how to put dinner on the table for anyone when ranting about Trump, Clinton, BLM, KKK, inequality, immigration, or any of dozens of other political hot topics. It's just childish your-team-vs-my-team railing against each other. You can find that sort of thing endlessly on other forums and I resoundingly applaud the HN team for taking a step to experiment with avoiding the waste of everyone's time for a week.

Please correct me if I have completely misread your statement. It sounds as if you believe there are topics that are so important that they must always be discussed in any forum dedicated to any topic?

I'm saying that, in a forum dedicated to the practice of shaping the 21st century world by people who have immense power to shape the world, having a "We will be having none of that politics stuff in here!" policy is dangerous. The tools we build affect people's lives. The world we live in affects how the technology we build will be used, what our tools enable, and the problems we should focus on solving.

Feigning that we can have conversations in isolation from the world at large is a dangerous lack of recognition of our power and our responsibility.

Can't you expand this argument until it completely fills your reality? Is it exercising privilege to order a coffee or a sandwich without discussing politics? If so, simply pretend that's what you're doing here, except instead of a sandwich you've ordered some technology news and discourse.

The issues will still be there to fight when you're done, just in a more appropriate forum.

The point the GP was making was that many of the topics that are regularly discussed here have an inherently political angle to them.

If that cup of coffee is from a civet[1], for example, then it does behoove you to consider the social ramifications of your actions.

And that sandwich, depending on who you are, what you look like, and where you are, could be considered extremely political.[2]

[1] http://world.time.com/2013/10/02/the-worlds-most-expensive-c...

[2] http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/6-legacy/freedom...

> "fired on the spot"

is this just rhetoric or are you serious? there are some rhetorical devices that shouldn't be used.

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?"

We should flag this thread instead.

Top kek.

perfect week for trump to trample digital rights and we have to stay quiet about it because crybaby racists who voted him in don't want their feelings hurt.

I for one think the imminent demise of human civilization is of interest to the intellectually curious and thoughtful readers of HN. I also believe that hurting the feelings of willful climate change deniers and suchlike people is a really good idea.

So HN is yet another filter bubble?

> We become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones.

HN is designed to be a tribe. The HN tribe and the Silicon Valley ethos it espouses are by their nature very political, having profound effects on the direction of our economy, our society, and our world. By censoring challenges to this ethos, you are reinforcing the tribal boundaries, and members of the tribe continue on without the constant challenge and testing that is the very nature of truth finding and even science.

This Tell HN is itself a political act.

This is ridiculous. Becoming an Ostrich is never a solution. Shame on you.

The pedantic bullshit in these comments is why America is in the shitter.

Let me get this right. Are they saying politics is to be hated actively for a recurring period of time?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate

Lol the primitive brain, the entire premise of this worldview is wack peace

Sure, bury your heads in the sand. Your country is taking a shortcut to Mad Max land, and there's not much to be done at this point anyway.

It just goes to show how white and privileged Silicon Valley as a whole is. Be glad that you only have to think about politics when it's time to elect your next president, that it won't affect whether you have a place to sleep or money in your pocket.

This is the same attitude YC showed the world when it kept Thiel on board. If Silicon Valley as a whole really cared about diversity (and it's becoming clear in many cases that it's only for PR), then you should find ways to facilitate constructive discourse (as HN has done with many other topics) and not ignore politics outright.

Is this because the HN preferred candidate lost? HN staff are upset and censor things in response?

I'm disappointed, if you can't handle politics how are you meant to disrupt an industry? Everything about our industry is political.. how are we meant to navigate our world if we can't debate one of the most defining aspects of it.

If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen. Don't censor important relevant discussions because of your emotions! You are failing your community

Terrible.

> It's over. After 20 months it's finally over...I'm free.

https://xkcd.com/500/

This is cowardly.

Hacker News is OVER

This fucking sucks.

I flagged this post because supressing political speech systematically, and even ignoring it, is actually active political discourse. Politics is not and never will be a separated topic, it is inextricable from everything we care about. This Tell HN is arguing for a specific political position about the nature of public discourse (that it is best stewarded from the top down by extremely rich people who overwhelmingly skew white, straight and male), and is arguing that intellectual curiosity and conflict are generally exclusive. This post is one tribe within the broader community of HN exerting its dominance over other tribes while pretending to be high-minded in resistance to tribalism.

Don't confuse yourselves: your tribe doesn't feel in immanent danger, doesn't think this community is in a unique position to help the world in a dangerous moment, and wants to stop being bothered by the imposition of reality on the dominant tribe that seems able to weather the storm and continue peacefully enriching itself. That is the tribe that owns HN, that seems to be the tribe that is in control of Silicon Valley's immense resources which are, to the profound shame of the entire industry, not being used to try to save its country.

The president is deeply unstable, lies constantly and has hired a team of bigoted, addled, corrupt old white men to serve him. Autocracy is incredibly dangerous. But it won't affect the leaders of the tribe who wrote this shameful post. Rich straight white people will almost certainly be safe from suffering. My family won't be and already isn't in vast swaths of the country.

This post and others in the last month have taught me that HN is not a community of smart people interested in technology. It is an apparatus of a few privileged people and their businesses that serves mostly one narrow community (engineers who are focused on earning money and/or luxuriating in their own preoccupations) that the owners want things from (talent and money). We can't learn together by hiding from this moment.

When talking politics means talking about the internment of muslims, talking about a conspiracy of Jews puppeteering the global economy, talking about refusing to enforce any civil rights laws that happen to mostly protect black people, when politics means the destabilization of the global economy and the global military equilibrium established since Workd War II, well then enforcing the state of not talking about politics is itself an act of violence.

Agreed. We live in scary times for a lot of people. Smart people agreeing not to talk about it, cannot be the right solution.

Far more interesting is to post your favorite SNL political clips. We need a levity injection attack around here.

Well. Let me just flag this post since its a political one.

so HN users admit that they are incapable of carrying out a civilized discussion on political issues? sad.

banning all political topics just because current state of affairs upsets someone is ridiculous. country is split in the middle, so what, when liberals win we will ban political topics again just because now the other side feels offended? how about you stop feeling offended and start listening to each other?

> so HN users

I'd appreciate if you didn't make accusations like these which include me in it. This is coming from a moderator - IIUC, it's entirely dang's idea.

> admit

a one week experiment.

> banning all political topics

Temporarily.

> just because current state of affairs upsets someone

It sounds like it has nothing to do with that.

> how about you stop feeling offended and start listening to each other

It starts with you. There is no other word than offended for your reaction to this little announcement here. And if you actually listened, you'd perhaps glance more than just "we're offended Trump won so we're banning politics forevah".

My initial reaction to this announcement was actually negative - I like politics on HN, the community does a decent job of keeping the trashy comments flagged. But then, seeing your post essentially proved dang's point: You've been here for 3.5 years, but just couldn't help yourself and take a piss on the community you're a part of, to try score some political points.

Urgh. It's so disappointing.

sigh... after reading this, we probably should ban politics. sad.

> For one week, political stories are off-topic. Please flag them. Please also flag political threads on non-political stories. For our part, we'll kill such stories and threads when we see them. Then we'll watch together to see what happens.

Okay, I've flagged this one thread titled "Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week". It was this strange and laborious screed about how political speech is harmful or something?

Privileging "non-political" speech is an implicit endorsement of the status-quo, and thereby, an incredibly political action.

This sounds like a cop out and I question whether this post would have been made had Trump lost and Clinton won.

Here's an idea. If a story is clearly political, then just turn off comment moderation except for flagging.

Objectively, HN has a huge problem with leftists and socialists downvoting conservative/libertarian comments.

Dang knows this. I haven't read all the comments, but if he denies that simple fact, then HN has bigger problems.

You can't have legitimate conversations if the other side is openly hostile to the very idea of even displaying contrarian to their beliefs opinions.

There was a big bubble that many on HN lived in until election day, when they must've realized that there's another half of the country that doesn't think like them.

Here's a perfect example of living in the bubble. Look at all the car hatred on HN, where people are almost giddy over ideas to ban them, limit them, etc...

The vast majority of the people in the world don't think that way.

HN is just a bubble and why it's a parody.

> Objectively, HN has a huge problem with leftists and socialists downvoting conservative/libertarian comments

It's funny how partisans on the right often say this, and partisans on the left often say the same thing, with the sides reversed.

The fact is, HN has sizable and active contigents from all parts if the political spectrum, and partisan voting (up and down) comes from all sides.

Maybe those on the right aren't as trigger-happy with the down-votes as the leftists are. Leftists aren't so keen on free speech anyway. Just look at the SJWs and the global warming crowd.

These types of generalizations are exactly why political discourse breaks down so quickly, regardless of political stripe. Two comments from an account created just to post them and attack a particular political position: is this the type of honest, nuanced political discussion you hold up as useful? My goodness. Do you want ants? Because that’s how you get ants.

> Maybe those on the right aren't as trigger-happy with the down-votes as the leftists are.

Or maybe they are.

> Leftists aren't so keen on free speech anyway.

And many leftists would say the same thing about rightists, with the same amount of justification.

Both the right and left have large factions with little devotion to free speech beyond what agrees with them. And both have factions that view disagreement and criticism as suppression.

I need to preface this by saying I voted for Jill Stein.

You're right that HN should be a place for intellectual curiosity and substantive comments. But here's what I've seen in the past year:

* Flagrantly allow anti-prop-8 posts and submissions to assist in the smearing of Brendan Eich.

* Flagrantly allow pro-clinton posts and link submissions to thrive on HN.

* Never step-in to stop downvoting brigades on pro-conservative/libertarian/tea party posts.

* After unpopular (with silicon valley) president is elected, ban political conversations on the site.

I won't call you biased, because you've been a damn good mod, but this is probably your worst decision, because it looks like sour-grapes-in-retrospect.

Perhaps you're doing it because the pro-clinton camp is actually becoming too toxic to tolerate. Perhaps you're doing it to avoid the 4chan brigade from promoting Trump. Either way, this is a site full of people skilled at reading between the lines, and, correct or not, this action doesn't look like a way of promoting reasonable discussion.

> it looks like sour grapes

This is one of those unintended consequences that gobsmack me any time we try out some new idea here. I'm sure anyone who deals with large internet communities has the same experience. The funny thing is that it's always obvious that it was bound to come up, in retrospect—just never beforehand. It's like the unveiling of the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel: hidden in plain view every time.

I don't know if I can respond in a way that satisfies you, but let me try. First, Clinton and Trump stories are equally penalized on HN. Second, it always seems like HN is biased against whatever views you personally hold, not because it is, but because the community is divided and we're biased to notice the things we dislike, and that offend us, more than the ones that don't. Your use of the word "flagrantly" is an instance of this. Why do the things you listed seem flagrant while others do not? Because they're mirroring your own preferences. (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13083111 and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... for more on this if you want.)

I guarantee you that the people who feel oppositely to you about X, Y, Z issues feel like their side is flagrantly the underdog in the same fights. This is one of the dynamics behind why political fights are so toxic to begin with.

> Either way, this is a site full of people skilled at reading between the lines

Read my lines, please! Just don't imagine lines, then imagine subtexts between them, and then read the imaginary subtext. Instead, ask. We're happy to explain what's going on—what's actually, really going on, as best we understand it.

I'd have a lot more confidence in the unbiased nature of a request like this if it was suggested prior to the outcome of the election. It's not like things were less contentious then.

Say if this were announced the day before the election, regardless of the outcome, with a hold period of say a month.

Arguably deciding to kibosh political chat before the election would've been even more contentious, because it could be seen as trying to affect the outcome of the election.

No matter who you favor right now, political discussion helps nobody. The outgoing President can't do anything much, and the incoming President can't do anything much either. Nothing you read in the next two months is realistically going to lead to you having a meaningful impact on anything, more than likely.

> Arguably deciding to kibosh political chat before the election would've been even more contentious, because it could be seen as trying to affect the outcome of the election.

I meant stating prior to the outcome of the election that after the election, regardless of the outcome, there would be an N-day moratorium on political discussions to allow the community to decompress. Maybe even start it a day after the election as obviously it'd be the news of the day on election day + 1.

This might actually be a good idea for every yearly election.

I'm of the opinion that, had HN banned political threads for a month after Prop 8, Eich would've still been in charge of the Mozilla Corporation. Which, I guess, means I view HN as a kingmaker.

EDIT: Modified post to be less flamebaity. I was genuinely interested in discussing HN's role in previous political stories.

Well, you're introducing a flamewar topic into a thread about how harmful those are and how we're taking a week off from them. I don't think the downvotes need much explaining.

fair enough. I though I had it couched in enough padding (it's my opinion, after all) that nobody would take that bait. My hope was that someone would debate whether or not HN is a kingmaker, or that it actually influenced the Eich situation. It was not to argue over whether that action was right or wrong.

I don't think I can fault dang for not being around for the Bush v. Gore (hanging chad) election, and the bitterness that it engendered on slashdot. Had he been paying attention then, he likely would've drawn parallels quickly and done exactly what you have said. I'll take him at face value when he says it was an action that should've been done in retrospect, but I'm not sure others won't be so quck to judge, if one is mindful of how much time the average HN reader thinks about a particular post or topic.

> I'd have a lot more confidence in the unbiased nature of a request like this if it was suggested prior to the outcome of the election.

Can't help you there. We don't have anything like that degree of finesse in planning.

The way it works is, we do our job and think about it a lot, and don't pay that much attention to other stuff, and when we think something is a good idea and finally get around to it, we do it. About the only thought that went into political timing was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13098321.

(emphasis mine):

> The way it works is, we do our job and think about it a lot, and don't pay that much attention to other stuff, and when we think something is a good idea and finally get around to it, we do it.

I do sincerely believe the italicized last part.

I also suspect that nobody on the HN mod team thought that Trump would actually win. It was such a far off concept that planning for it and the ensuing gloating / division / trolling would have been laughable. If they did, they would have put more thought into stating this type of thing in advance as I'm pretty sure it's been suggested more than once over the past few months.

Even if we had guessed, we don't plan for things like who might win an election. That would be crazymaking.

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 liken it to game testing, where one is encouraged to play incorrectly in order to identify bugs in a program.

Whereas as another participant, I see your approach as more akin to a 'griefer' than play tester. I think there is a difference between testing a pre-release game, and disrupting others who are trying to find a community in which to communally understand the world. There are some good parts that would be sad to lose, and even without deliberate misrepresentation the situation is fragile. Please be gentle with your research, and don't take for granted the resilience of the community here.

I just don't agree that HN is "equally-biased", and I have the post history to prove it.

Perhaps those of different biases are more or less likely to flag or vote? That is, could there be many here who believe more strongly in the positives of free speech, and thus are reluctant to flag comments they disagree with, such that a small number of flaggers who do not share this view have a disproportionate voice? I don't know what the vote-to-view ratio is for HN, but I'd presume it's very small, with the flag-to-view being miniscule in almost all cases.

Upvoted for disagreement.

HN is like a "release early, release often" sort of software project, which would require active testers on live code. I sincerely doubt that my sole efforts to study/game the system really made much effect overall to moderation. However, I definitely try to take your advice, and will continue to do so.

What I've found about voting/flagging is it's largely laziness, and those who take the opportunity to downvote first. Most of my posts are either downvoted within 5 minutes, or upvoted to +2 or 3, then actively downvoted to -3. There is usually a bottom on meta-moderation, though; once a post gets to -3, a post is rarely seen enough to be flagged. This goes triple for older submissions; if you make a new post on a day-old thread, even the most vitriolic and offensive post possible, you may get a 0 karma for the post. if you're unlucky. Either way your post will be near the bottom, even if +1.

I've had this account for 3 years now, and I had my first two flagged posts today, which tells you how little they are flagged.

If you're 45 minutes late to a topic, you'll likely read for a few minutes before you get to the bottom grey area. Most readers of comments flake out of a thread before they get that far. The ones that stick around usually notice the grey text, and don't downvote or flag, even if they disagree heavily with the comment. This is why it gets interesting when I experience late downvote-bombings, or someone that was so offended by what I said, that they downvote my post history; it means that someone went looking for me to retaliate. These anomalies provide a lot of information about the mean moderation activity, I think.

I'm seeing that all sides of a debate seem to have equal amounts of apathy when it comes to downvoting or flagging, and I attempt to account for that when playing.

I'm tempted to try and see how long a "Trump Supporters for Systemd" post would last in a linux thread this week, but I probably won't.

I sincerely doubt that my sole efforts to study/game the system really made much effect overall to moderation.

I was thinking more of the effect on me, and other users. I try to engage with people and understand why they hold the views they do. The greater the tolerance for users who are faking their viewpoints, the easier it is to fall into the habit of treating someone holding a genuine minority opinion as a troll or shill.

Other than being worried about the gaming approach, I agree with most of the rest of what you are saying.

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