Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

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HN is for topics that gratify intellectual curiosity, not "software development". Please see the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You're certainly right that this is an inflammatory topic with strong political and ideological overlap, and as the guidelines explain, we don't want flamewar here, and we don't want ideological or political battle. The site exists for intellectual curiosity, and those things aren't compatible. There's a great deal of established moderation practice around this, if anyone wants to read past explanations:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

That doesn't automatically make a story like this off topic for HN. It depends on whether there's enough new information in a story to support a substantive discussion. In this case, the topic is not just "gender ideology", it's ongoing developments at universities and in the discourse at large. All of these are significant and interesting phenomena. For that reason I turned the flags off on this submission. That's also established moderation practice (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). It requires a judgment call, of course, and we don't always make the right calls—but not making any would be an even worse call.

Of course it's commenters' responsibility to stick to the side guidelines if posting in such a thread. That means curious, thoughtful conversation and respect toward other commenters (and other people generally). Flamewar, flamebait, snark, name-calling, personal attacks and so on are not ok. People sometimes think that just because a topic is inflammatory it means they get carte blanche to spew what they will (e.g. "if you don't want me to post like this then you shouldn't allow this thread in the first place"). I call that argument "the topic made me do it", and not only is it false, the opposite is true: commenters here are under a greater obligation in cases like this, as the site guidelines make clear: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

> HN is for topics that gratify intellectual curiosity

I think that's the problem with a topic like this on HN. There will be little learning going on, with many statements made with certainty by individuals that have never studied any of these concepts in any detail. The level of dismissal in the comments is itself a reason to pull the plug.

That's certainly a big problem, but HN can't be a site for intellectual curiosity and at the same time exclude every story with political or ideological overlap. People sometimes imagine that that would be better, but only in the context of a specific story or thread they don't like. If you try to imagine it as a general policy it breaks down altogether. Nor would this community accept such severe restrictions on the range of topics. I don't think we have any choice but to patiently work together at having more thoughtful conversation.

I've written extensively about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490.

If anyone has a question that hasn't been answered there, I'd like to know what it is, and if you know a better way for HN to relate to political topics while fulfilling its mandate of curiosity, I'd really like to know what it is. Just please familiarize yourself with the past material first, because if it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've answered many times already why it won't work.

It feels like why subreddits or /pol/ exist: to segregate that to a place where people are most interested.

HN is a non-siloed site, meaning we don't have subreddits, or any of the other ways that large communities segregate themselves. Here we're all in one big room together, like it or not. It's always been that way and I think it's part of its DNA.

This has advantages and disadvantages, as with all such design choices, but it's good to be conscious of what one's design actually is, since otherwise one might end up fucking with the DNA, which doesn't seem like a great idea.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098

>fucking with the DNA

This is the first time I've "heard" you curse.

I don't know, it was just a little jarring. Not in a bad way. Just... different, I guess. Well done.

Predictability is bad for curiosity :)

I was going to link you to https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... but it looks like most of those are quoting other people.

Looks like he started using "fuck" outside of quotes in 2016.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=4&prefix=true&que...

Understandable.

You don't have to read the comments. The article itself was very good I thought.

I too like nuanced discussion on HN and I generally don't shy from political questions.

That said, HN is the watering hole for people with multiple political approaches on a fairly wide spectrum.

I think debate between these people is best facilitated by prompts and articles which raise multiple nuanced questions. And I think we do have useful debates at this point.

What isn't useful is something like an overt manifesto for one or another "side" on this political spectrum. And HN generally avoids such things.

But there's a kind of article, like this one imo, that is more or less a manifesto - an article that stake out a position and only give apparent gestures at balance. These have the same low-quality potential as manifestos. In important questions, it's unfortunate have a lot of uninformed posts even when they aren't flame bait.

In the case of the present article, I don't think readers of the article will come away with any greater understanding of "Gender Theory" and what gives rise to it and so it's not really a generator of good quality discussion even when people are not shouting at each.

Edit: Another thing I should add is that in the case of article that are effectively manifestos, upvotes and downvotes are going to gravitate to being just around the popularity of various positions and that too lowers the quality of discussion.

I wanted to express thanks to Dang for the moderation of this site, precisely because we can learn, discuss, and evaluate difficult topics like this, without flame wars, and rudeness. There are a lot of good comments here today, that satisfy and stimulate, our moral, cultural, ideological and biological curiosities. Thanks Dang!

I wish that description were more accurate, but thanks.

Most of the discussion is the same old talking points. Probably because the only new information in the article is scant detail about a handful of disconnected events. The likes of which have gone on for years. The title is inflammatory too. Multiple ideologies are involved but only 1 is called that.

Insightful, thanks. Great moderating!

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