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Another intrinsic problem with politics on HN:

A lot of the best posts on HN are narrowly specialized, so that apart from maybe asking questions, most HN commenters can't contribute much (but benefit from reading!).

But political arguments are available to every member of the site, no matter how specialized the story might be.

So we get situations like Amazon announcing Route 53, and the thread being hijacked with comments about how Amazon handled Wikileaks, or a new paper on measuring and mitigating statistical bias in machine learning algorithms hijacked with comments about political correctness.

Politics often literally prevents us from discussing technical stories, by forcing us to wade through banal political detritus to get to the comments that have anything to do with the technical issues.

We also inevitably get technical threads being derailed by people complaining that the posted site blocks their ad-blockers, is behind a paywall or uses javascript, but for some reason those aren't considered as off-topic as tangential politics.

Those are in fact all off-topic, and get off-topic-detached by 'dang and 'sctb routinely!

Maybe the quality of the political discussion is so crappy because we don't talk about it?

My experience is that one has to express their emotional relationship to problems and be aware of it before they can actually insightfully engage with problems; if people don't, they just introduce their emotional biases into their problem solving and pretend they're not.

That works in personal therapy. If you expect people in a thread of hundreds of partisan comments to have some kind of catharsis, please see r/politics.

It's too complex of a topic and too emotional to be discussed in a large group setting.

You make a good point, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion - think this is an area of open research - could we build UX for discussion forums that don't encourage and highlight shouting matches? I think the wide-open nature of twitter, for example, where everyone can immediately jump in on any conversation without context or consequences encourages such shouting matches and abusive comments.

There's a reason a one-on-one discussion is much likelier to at least be resolved in amicable disagreement and a greater understanding of perspectives, versus online "discussion" is often about vast hordes of people participating in one single "conversation" one comment at a time, while also trying to get upvotes.

I think it's quite possible to alleviate this, but requires getting over the simplistic per-comment upvote/everyone can comment on every thread model.

The primary reason for the immense difficulty is that casual political discussions are almost entirely wild speculation and conjecture. The topics are too vast and complex. Most people don't have the tools and understanding needed to have deep insights or meaningfully predict the actual impacts of different approaches. Throw in the emotional and tribal components, and it's not surprising that politics is a never-ceasing shitstorm.

This isn't true for every issue. Some things are relatively simple, like gay marriage for example. But the more obvious issues tend to get settled eventually, even if takes a few decades or centuries :)

It amazes me that I rarely see this discussed. Of course, I also fall in this bucket.

But wait a second, the "detox experiment" was abandoned after only two days. 'dang summarized the learnings as

"it's impossible to define 'politics' with any consensus because that question is itself highly political, and that HN is at its best when it can meander through all the (intellectually) interesting things, some of which inevitably have political dimensions."

More at https://medium.com/a-change-is-coming/learning-from-hacker-n...

Yes, and the key words there are "intellectually interesting" (as opposed to other kinds of interesting) and "some".

The other thing to understand is that this has always been the policy. It hasn't changed, other than the few times we've run explicitly temporary experiments, like the no-politics one or Erlang day as described elsewhere in this thread.

Right. In fact, I included your quote saying "the existing guidelines have it about right" in my essay. So I thought it was pretty entertaining that the top-rated comment here summarizes the discussion in the post announcing the experiment without paying any attention to the result of the experiment.

>without paying any attention to the result of the experiment.

The results are not relevant to my criticism of JM's specific essay:

He's misrepresenting the people who don't want politics discussion as "ostriches". The extra nuance he ignores is that many HN'rs acknowledge the pervasiveness of politics. Many also desire political discussion -- but not on HN.

He equates "avoidance of politics" == "politics not important fingers stuck in ears"

His essay does not address the issue of "avoidance of politics" == "avoidance low-quality emotional posts".

By omitting the full nuance of the opposing position, he's distorting the argument in his favor.

The people you're citing in that thread were supporting an absolute ban on political discussion on HN. That certainly sounds like ostriching to me. And sure, JM could have pointed out the specific nuanced intellectual incoherency of the people in that thread acknowledging pervasiveness of politics and then trying to exclude politics from discussions here - 'dang described it as "delusional" - but I don't see him leaving that out as distorting his argument.

>incoherency of the people in that thread acknowledging pervasiveness of politics and then trying to exclude politics from discussions here

It's not "incoherent" at all and by using that label, you're falling into the same trap as JM using the label "ostrich mentality".

Imagine a political science professor that lived and breathed "politics" all the time such that he teaches classrooms, writes books, and sits on panels debating various policies with others. Now, imagine a friend's mother invites him to Thanksgiving dinner. It is suggested that politics not be discussed. Yes, the professor could be impossibly obstinate about it and say, "that's delusional -- there are politics in the production of that turkey, the food lobby, the creation of the Federal Holidays, etc. Politics is embedded in _everything_!"

However, the professor doesn't have to be that inflexible. He can avoid politics talk during that dinner and the very next day, sit on a panel with Noam Chomsky and Christopher Hitchens and debate every political hot button topic under the sun.

Turning off-and-on the political discourse switch for certain venues is not "ostrich mentality" nor "incoherent". Perhaps there's a different reason that some people don't want politics on HN: the political comments are low quality.

Likewise, the mother isn't delusional/incoherent in thinking that politics doesn't exist everywhere. She's just attempting to set the tone for a pleasant agreeable evening.

I'd paraphrase this last interaction as

me: it's incoherent to see politics as pervasive and then try to exclude politics from discussions of technology

you: it's not incoherent to see politics as pervasive and then exclude them from a social holiday dinner where the goal is a pleasant agreeable vibe

We seem to be speaking at cross-purposes.

Anyhow, I agree with you many people on HN say they don't want political discussion on HN because they see the comments as low-quality, or breaking what they otherwise see as a pleasant and agreeable vibe. And I think I understand your perspective:

- you think the OP would be stronger if it had mentioned that - you don't like it when people characterize your position (acknowleding the importance of politics but still not wanting to have political discussions on Hacker News) as avoidance ("ostrich mentality") or intellectually incoherent

> 4) All that said, the politics discussion on HN and similar sites is low quality, bad signal-to-noise ratio, full of emotional comments instead of insightful ones.

Disagree. Because what about that phrase from extreme programming / devops: Bring the pain forward.

Maybe if there hadn't been censure, we'd be inclined to work here on better ways to have controversial, emotional conversations. See: pol.is https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-da7570d372b5

I was personally really disappointed in premise of the detox -- though perhaps more retrospectively as time wore on and I saw this place neutered. I now go elsewhere for my fix of political ideation and creativity.

> Therefore, it's possible to simultaneously hold the view that politics is super important and they don't want it on HN.

I grudgingly fell into this category. For a long time, I was frustrated that certain technology-related political topics were being banished from HN, but watching what is happening to other online communities I must accept that this is the best practice. I used to love Slashdot, but that community has grown completely toxic, and I blame the flame-war political discussions for its decline.

I heavily follow the Science Online community on twitter because I loved the sense of wonder I got from the articles all the PhDs were sharing. Now I open twitter, get infected with their outrage, and take it out on my political-opposites on Facebook. I've had to limit my social media exposure and unfollow a lot of people in an effort to stay out of that bad mental place.

I need a place where I can forget about politics and recharge my sense of wonder. We need to keep HN a sanctuary for rationality and promoting human-improvability.

This is just a rationalization.

Yes, much political discourse on HN tends to be lower quality.

However, trying to establish HN as a "politics-free zone" is not only impossible but deeply problematic when so many of us work on things that are politically important. (I'm trying to avoid rehashing the whole article's argument again here.)

Getting your diet of political discourse somewhere else effectively means staying in your ideological filter bubble when you talk about politics. The political discussions here are valuable precisely because we can't do that here; HN members are self-selected by interests that cross-cut political lines.

The perspective that politics shouldn't be discussed because it is difficult is the rationalization, and the underlying motivation for some is the desire to treat tech and the work we do as apolitical, because to do otherwise would have uncomfortable consequences.

The political discussions here are valuable precisely because we can't do that here; HN members are self-selected by interests that cross-cut political lines.

That's only the case because the guidelines and moderation practices are set up to keep political flamewars off the site. Those benefits would evaporate very quickly if HN was allowed to become a political free-for-all.

The perspective that politics shouldn't be discussed because it is difficult is the rationalization.

The difficulty of political discussion isn't the rationalisation; the rationalisation is the predictability and mundaneness, and pointless incivility; i.e., people get emotionally heated, but resolve nothing and nobody learns anything. Nobody benefits and the quality of the site only degrades.

Topics related to politics are discussed here quite successfully all the time, and when it happens it's because the topic and resulting discussion is gratifying to one's curiosity and/or evidence of some interesting new phenomenon , as per the site guidelines.

the underlying motivation for some is the desire to treat tech and the work we do as apolitical, because to do otherwise would have uncomfortable consequences.

Few people are intelligent and socially-aware enough to be a high achievers in their business or career and yet naïve enough to think that their work is apolitical. And plenty of prominent HN contributors are perfectly capable of expressing strong political positions in their tweets and blog posts but keeping them out of their comments on HN.

> That's only the case because the guidelines and moderation practices are set up to keep political flamewars off the site.

I agree. But it's not the political topics that are the problem, it's the incivility.

Keeping incivility out of political discussions is more difficult than keeping politics out of technical discussions.

However, there are discussions that we should be having, around professional ethics, data privacy, censorship, advertising, etc, that are inseparably both political and technical.

I do think plenty of people are high achievers as engineers but want to regard their work as apolitical.

While we should not tolerate incivility, we should also be willing to face political issues and differences with consideration and respect. If the people on HN can't do that, who can?

>However, there are discussions that we should be having, around professional ethics, data privacy, censorship, advertising, etc,

Those tech topics intertwined with politics wasn't what I was talking about. (That is why I used the more purely political example of "Trump denies climate change" instead of a tech story like "Facebook attacks data privacy.")

And that example is the same theme dang was explaining in a previous comment[1]:

2016-12-06 -- "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."

dang's examples are very different from your political topics such as "professional ethics, data privacy, censorship, advertising". You'll notice that your examples are the type of topics that virtually all of HN readers will pile on the comments in violent agreement. Those topics don't create incivility. In fact, (modulo a few contrarians) they tend to foster a lovefest instead of flamewars!

Unfortunately, dang buried the "politics" clarification deep in that thread instead of spelling it out at the very top of the detox announcement so a lot of people got confused into thinking that political topics like "data privacy" and "software patents" was being censored.

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

I'm actually talking about the conversations we don't have here about those same issues, because many people's salaries depend on them not understanding them.

(I'm stating that in general terms because any specific example would be subjective and would tend to sidetrack the discussion.)

I'm not taking issue with the way HN is moderated. What I do want to point out is that there is a tendency in this community (and among engineers) to avoid political ramifications and pretend that technical work exists in a vacuum.

It's this problem that I believe Mr. Mattheij is also getting at, and the idea of HN as a politics-free zone is just one of many manifestations.

I agree that the net effect of general political discussion on HN is negative.

Jacques M did not post his article to HN though - that was someone else. He put it it on his own blog, where surely he's entitled to talk about politics if he wants to.

Furthermore, in the article there's no mention of Trump anywhere. He's taking about the intersection of politics and technology, and surely there needs to be a metaspace to talk about that somewhere, even if that space is not on HN? (For example, SO has a meta.) Otherwise, if we Hackers cede that metaspace entirely then the lawyer types who run the world from Davos will just decide for us. [1]

[1] I don't agree with everything he says, but IIRC I first read that sentiment expressed by Eben Moglen, though I don't

"Trump denies climate change" is not a political story.

It's a story that takes a place of a tech politis story that could be there.

True, but unfortunately, those are the stories we're talking about - because those are the ones media write.

If you can and post a story called "Detailed analysis of Trump's new energy policy", that features credible facts and figures instead of opinions, simplifications and insults, it will have pretty good chances of sticking on the front page here.

You can find those analysis, but try submitting a link to the CATO blog and just watch. They are a libertarian site with good articles on climate, taxes, and government abuse; mostly police misconduct.

the whole recent climate issue is a bunch of people not understanding the Paris accord and assuming it did so much more than it would. it was a "in name only" agreement much like other agreements created and implemented in the last decade

And thanks to "political" discussions between highly informed HN members I learned that (Paris being toothless).

I'd say I benefited a lot from that discussion, as did a lot of other people. So I guess create controversy with whatever links you like, so we all can learn something.

I disagree with you on 4): there are quite a few insightful interesting discussions on HN about politics I've observed and been part of. They have changed my mind and made me think about things. I find political comments on HN to be noticeably higher quality than other sites, though I'll grant political HN comments are lower quality than technical HN comments.

But the main point I'd like to bring up is this: what you're saying is true about politics in general. But there are a lot of politics which are explicitly about technology and more specifically software technology. Political decisions are being made and laws are being passed that effect our industry, livelihoods, and lives and the community as a whole is infected with this head-in-sand "I'm above politics, politics isn't truly 'geeky' so I don't deal with it, I check out when people describe their emotions or lives instead of technical runtime analysis" attitude. I've observed it online in forums, in industry, in academia, it is an unfortunate facet of the cultural place the tech community inhabits.

But if all of the technical experts eschew politics then these political decisions that seriously effect our lives and our work will still be made: but without our input. By refusing to discuss and create politically active technical communities we cede all power to people who know nothing and care even less about the important technical issues of our time.

The tech community is pretty wide ranging in its political beliefs, but when we discuss the politics of technology there is general consensus on many issues among most: NN is good, banning encryption is bad, unrestricted access to the Internet is of fundamental importance and a liberating force, it would be better to have a choice of ISP, software patents are too broad, copyright/IP law is too extreme and stifles creativity, mass surveillance is troubling (whether you think it is also necessary or not).

There are a variety of extremely political issues that are fundamental to tech:

1) Should developers have a professional organization or union with e.g. ethical standards and certifications?

2) As a fundamental moral question, how do we feel about/what should we do about the millions of workers we personally displace and leave jobless through automation?

3) How, if at all, should the Internet be regulated? Is it a utility? Antitrust?

4) Immigration and outsourcing technical jobs.

5) What should happen when law enforcement demands information that is protected by encryption? Should encryption that the FBI cannot break be allowed?

6) How should copyright and IP work with respect to software, algorithms, APIs?

7) Should developers be held accountable for writing software that leaks data? Should users have fundamental rights to their own data? Privacy?

8) Regulations on IoT devices like cars

The list can go on and on and on. While I'd agree a thread on climate change might not be particularly insightful or interesting here, it is crucial the tech community discusses the issues above regularly so that when a bill is put forth, or input is elicited, there is an actual community of experts that present a (reasonably) united front, who have discussed these things amongst themselves.

If we had banned political discussion on HN and sites like it, SOPA would probably be law right now. It was stopped because the entire tech community discussed it constantly, came to an agreement that it was bad, and took extreme collective political action against it.

>While I'd agree a thread on climate change might not be particularly insightful or interesting here, it is crucial the tech community discusses the issues above

Your "tech politics" isn't what the detox experiment was about. Please see my other reply that repeats dang's clarification: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14476525

I'd agree here. There's no reason to discuss politics on HN when there are numerous other places to do so.

HN is a forum about technology and the startup world, let's keep it about that.

I kinda like the eclectic mix of articles linked on HN, and offers something in terms of content discovery.

Why not just browse Reddit, then? r/all should give a good mix of content. If that's not to your taste, pick subreddits that interest you.

EDIT: Sorry if this came off as snarky, but it wasn't intended that way.

No absolutely, don't apologise - I get where you're coming from, sometimes the stuff that gets posted isn't necessarily current or even particularly important, but its regularly /interesting/.

I like to think of it as being in a bar with a whole bunch of super smart, interesting people. Sometimes I've got nothing to add or I simply don't get it, but its consistently interesting, and occasionally unexpected and brilliant.

Heck, there was an article about butterflies the other day, it was pretty damn good, and something I'd never have read otherwise. For me at least that is HN - nerdy stuff with occasional flashes of brilliance.

I would add though that the HN community at large, when we do slide into politics, does have by far and away the most interesting discussions on that topic I've ever read. There's no comparison to Facebook IMHO.

If the net effect of political discourse on HN is negative, it's a pretty good sign that the community needs to grow the fuck up. If we're unable to examine our role in the world -- what is happening and how our work fits in -- anyone advertising a startup as "world-changing" is dangerous, naive, or dangerously naive.

That said, dang almost ran me out of here for daring to call out conspiracy theorists out on their BS, so perhaps things are broken by design.

Please note, this is just my 2 cents.

Political discourse ruins online communities for people looking for technical and not political discussions. It's ruined Reddit as a technical forum; I have to filter several subreddits from r/all because I'm trying to avoid Trump news, and r/technology fought long and hard to keep political posts from dominating their subreddit, which it now does.

More here: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/23y1j4/meta_doe...

Basically, I want there to exist a safe space for computer engineers that I may disagree with politically to talk solely about solutions and products that solve technical problems, and not get sidetracked with whether or not I agree that Donald Trump having Patriot Act powers is terrible. I don't need yet another circlejerk in my life, I want the news.