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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

This is a better link than the earlier post about this today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20060252), but it's likely to suffer from the same problem: all threads about Assange have become the same. They all angrily relitigate the whole story from scratch. Receptivity, curiosity, and information exchange—what HN exists for—are low; indignation and repetition—the two most fatal qualities—are high. If this continues, we're going to start moderating these threads more heavily, not for or against Assange, but to protect HN.

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

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To wax philosophically on this topic:

From a systems perspective, the observed phenomenon is that the system enters a state where agents no longer meaningfully exchange information and further attempts at information exchange paradoxically result in reduced consensus.

This isn't a problem unique to HN, but is one that HN has systematically tried to avoid. I have no answer, but am taking time to frame and pose the question properly, so that we can consciously acknowledge the phenomenon and address it properly.

One might speculate that if people could systematically avoid entering such a state things such as war wouldn't be possible, I imagine PG would agree.

A weaker and perhaps more achievable goal would be to back out of that state, a little, once we get into it.

I'm not PG but have had the same thought about war, and mentioned it recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19994991. Sometimes I think that the patterns of behavior we're trying to work out in this trivial internet forum are not, in the end, so trivial.

> all threads about Assange have become the same

This is what I have observed in all threads marginally related to 'censorship'/'freedom of speech'. The exact same ideologically charged opinions, often mixed with a dose of middle school level name calling., get reiterated every one or two days, usually by the same set of users. I use to find those flame wars boring, but now I have learned to appreciate the beauty in the amount of efforts people throw into this dumpster fire. It’s the Sisyphus of our time.

And now Assange has also joined the club.

In all seriousness, I wonder what would happen if submissions get penalized more heavily by flagging. I guess there are lots of people how visit HN for the general tech-related interesting stuff, who have shut up due to the immense heat from those flame wars, and would happily click the 'Flag' button if it would bring back a less combative environment for discussion.

I have a fairly long internal list of topics where the comments are generally a rehash of past discussions. To mention a somewhat top 10:

Affirmative action.

Privilege.

Piracy.

Gender segregation.

Ad blockers.

Permissive vs GPL license.

Trump.

Fake news.

Diet and climate change.

Weight loss.

Static vs. dynamic types?

I'd think exceptions can be made for exceptional cases. Like it or not, this is a subject that has implications for very fundamental freedoms that most free citizens consider necessary for a positive future. While it may be tiring to hear the repetition and indignation, I think certain subjects should allow it. If not, you are possibly censoring the voices for liberty and humanity.

The propaganda machines are too big and too well oiled. Stopping their dissidents, even if it's just on HN for the sake of a better HN experience, IMHO is too far. As long as the front page isn't bombarded constantly, people can scroll past to another article if they know the dialogue will be repetitive. I don't think that's too much to ask in dire situations, although maybe you're saying HN doesn't consider this situation dire...

EDIT: Lmao 10 mins in, multiple down votes but no responses. Good work HN.

The trouble with that argument is that everyone has their different idea of what the exception should be. If we accommodate them all, that's the same as anything goes.

I personally found a lot of new information and/or well-argued arguments on the linked comment thread.

I'd be curious to see links.

This is a direct result of the disinformation regarding this story by both supporters and detractors of Assange.

Details are repeatedly argued because low-info headlines kept being released by media conglomerates, and, even the readers here have relied on those.

Quite possibly. And likely equally true of most other divisive topics. The question is, how do we handle that here? If we leave it to run its course untrammeled, that amounts to letting this place shatter.

I think if you post a reminder such as you did here, to be civil and in pursuit of understanding (instead of flames) on this topic, and perhaps of the intricacies that I mentioned, you'll end up trending the comments towards your desired range.

Thanks for caring, and discussing, sir.

It would be cool if there were a way to see how "repeated" the content of a given comment is across similar stories so users could make their own judgement on the value of novel views. Similarly, penalizing comments (display-order wise) for being "mere" repetition would be a neat way of nudging discussion towards novelty without applying the "strong" censorship of deletion.

Novelty has diminishing returns when you don't optimize for something else; there are many more ways to be wrong than there are to be right, after all.

it's useful to be reminded of where the argument stands, and to get people unfamiliar with the state of argument up to speed.

a quick, factual recitation of basic arguments could be helpful, if boring, to direct the novelty toward the edges of the argument where it can hopefully push toward insightful territory?

it should be ok to be wrong (if hard to identify and harder to internalize); the problem seems to be obstinacy (e.g., shouting the same things over and over).

My gut feeling is that software techniques are still too crude to capture just the kind of repetition that we'd want to downweight. But it would be interesting if that were wrong.

Sentiment analysis would be possible to run on either or both of articles and individual comments - I've done it before on a forum that had far less activity than HN does and gotten at least some usable data. You could then track individual features (e.g. "Julian Assange", "Uber" or "free speech") over time, I'd assume that both how frequently it appears in comments and how the sentiment towards it changes over time are both interesting if you were thinking of some sort of metrics.

Forums are also quite good sources for intent and emotional analysis along with just sentiment, you could probably get to see what topics are (5, Flamebait) in the old Slashdot sense :)

https://www.kdnuggets.com/2018/08/emotion-sentiment-analysis...

Do you have the ability to allow the link to stand but suppress the discuss link?

I’m still interested in following this issue, but agree further discussions here serve no productive purpose.

My take on that idea is that it would be running away from the hard problem of having an internet forum that doesn't suck.

I can appreciate that position and the fortitude behind it.

Nationalism does not represent receptivity, curiosity, and information exchange. Assange does.

I'm not sure I understand your comment, but we're only interested in those qualities in how they manifest in HN threads. They're not absolute values—they're simply ways to achieve the goal of the site, which is to be interesting. Assange may be interesting and Assange may represent information exchange, but empirically, the arguments people are having about him here are falling below the minimal substance line.

I flagged this in the hope that other moderators will review and retract or at least refine this statement. I do hope that moderator posts that are flagged are reviewed by a different moderator?

We are surely not supposed to be here to reach consensus but to discuss issue.

This is a deep topic and people disagree on fundamental levels. In order to express themselves clearly they have to start from the beginning.

There are two HN moderators, dang and sctb, and I'm sure the two are in agreement when dang speaks in the plural.

dang didn't say the problem was the failure to reach a consensus, but that there is no discussion, only angry dissension.

I agree that it's a deep topic and that people disagree on fundamental levels. Unfortunately, that's not enough to make for minimally acceptable discussion, i.e. something better than repetitive flamewar. In managing this site, that's one of the main things we have to watch out for. The topics may be incredibly important but what good is that if we blow ourselves up trying to deal with them?

> relitigate the whole story from scratch

that's what most of the articles do, though! The earlier post today is about how journalists consistently distort the facts in the story. And pretty much every MSM article about him dutifully refrains "escaped sweden, holed-up in the embasy, rape charge".

I agree this story is tiresome, but please acknowledge that news stories recite the narrative excessively. (and the article today suggest perhaps there's a reason for that)

I'm happy to acknowledge that. But how does it change how we should manage HN?

I just think if the articles are about X, don't be surprised when the audience talks about X. But I understand your frustration. I'm currently reading the comments on _today's_ 737 max article and feels just like Groundhog Day.

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