Poll: Allow stories about the election? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Allow stories about the election?

23 pointspg37 comments

There's a case to be made both for (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=349350) and against (politics) having stories related to the upcoming election. Which do you prefer?

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This is hacker news. I come here to see stories which aren't given much attention elsewhere. The election is getting lots of attention elsewhere.

That said, I'm not in favour of a blanket ban-anything-related-to-the-election approach. An article concerning how the candidates want to apply income taxes to startups would be relevant here, as would an article about the lack of security in electronic voting machines. But those articles would be newsworthy in spite of the election, not because of it.

We have the entire nation, TV networks talking about it 24x7 (sick of it) - don't need it this forum.

I had about six business meetings today. Since I don't get paid to talk about politics (and it's a good way to piss off half the population) I don't bring it up. In 4 of the 6 meetings people were talking about politics anyway.

I just give up. I'd love to keep the entire board free of this stuff but no matter what the topic, when people are passionate about something, they find some way to put their position in there. Let's review Obama's web security policy, or talk about how some famous IT guy endorses Obama (or McCain.) Just forget that we ourselves are some rather famous IT guys in certain cases and by the same standard should be able to endorse candidates directly on the board.

People are emotional animals and use reason and logic to make the world make sense to them, not to light their way. So no matter what the rule, in an emotionally charged environment, people are just going to do whatever the hell they want to do and come up with reasons (or excuses) to justify it all later on. That's just life.

"I just give up. I'd love to keep the entire board free of this stuff but no matter what the topic, when people are passionate about something, they find some way to put their position in there."

You post as much about politics as anyone on this site.

Don't believe I've ever posted an article that was political, but mea culpa, I didn't exclude myself from my comments.

I am a bit confused about your point.

I was pointing out some crocodile tears. If you want to keep this place free of political discussion, then don't talk about politics.

Maybe you were only referring to "articles" about politics, but if you comment on the articles, you encourage them.

Crocodile tears?

I made an observation about human nature. It's true regardless of the current situation.

Aside from the Krugman Wars, I haven't really gotten involved aside from making some observations.

To me, your comment sounded like "But you do it too!" with the appropriate tongue sticking out. I didn't call you on it, because I assumed better of you. If you could return the courtesy that would be good. If not, that's okay too. No harm mate.

I'm not judging you for talking about politics. Do whatever you like -- it's my opinion that intelligent discussion of politics is fair game, even for "hackers".

The point is, if you're a regular participant in the political discussions, you can't very well post about how you wish they'd all go away.

timr, sometimes I think you're from another planet.

I said I'd like for the politics to stay off the board, but basically it was impossible to do because of the nature of all of us humans that were interacting here. There is a conflict between what we would like and what is best for the board and our nature.

You took that and made it out to be some kind of hypocritical statement. Is there something about how we never meet our own ideals that you can't understand? I mean, maybe you're much better than this, but I find myself acting at odds with my own standards all the time -- it's part of the human condition.

In fact, because of this conflict and inevitability, I agreed with you on another thread that it would be good to try to figure out how to bring the political discussions in. I guess you could say that's hypocritical of me because it conflicts the the OP of this thread, but that would be easily missing the point too.

Nice. Insults aren't ad hominem when they're hedged.

Look, man -- I quoted you. You can play this game of I-didn't-say-that all you want, but I quoted you, responded to the quote, and explained myself as clearly as I know how.

Now I just think you're playing a troll's game, and I'm done with it.

I can certainly understand that some want HN to only be hacker tech stuff and nothing else. However, I hack and build IT companies because of their social value. I think most do. The tech is a conduit, not the end itself, regardless of how much we get geeky about the tech.

A 4 year U.S. election cycle is a big event and based on the extreme volatile economy, directly related to poor governance, I see some ties between hacker news and politic news to be meaningful.

You may not get paid to talk about politics, but it is a key part of all our lives. Perhaps if we spent more time paying attention to governance in the intervening 4 years, we wouldn't have such a mess on our hands.

My opinion is to let the existing voting system of HN follow its nature and see what happens.

I value the well tended nature of this forum. Barring a specific comment from a candidate regarding the VC or entrepreneurial environment ("interesting in a way that transcends politics", as stated above), politics represents enough of a deviation from point that I would not care for it.

As far as I've ever seen elsewhere, political discourse seems to dissolve into meritless echo chambers where user-moderation is permitted, or inane bickering where user-moderation is not permitted. Without some serious magic up your sleeve I don't know how this could be avoided.

Politics? What politics. Oh - you mean all that stuff over at reddit is politics - I thought it was a TV soap - nothing about the politics of Europe, Asia or Africa that I have seen.

I think it best to keep parochial politics well away from HN.

Reddit has several very active political sections. I see no reason to have the same conversations here.

That is the reason I voted "no". If news.yc was the only place to get interesting political discussion, I might have to think about it - even then I might not necessarily say "yes" - but as it is, I agree with you word for word.

I love that there is no politics here. It's really eerie though. There's so much about politics in everything I read, hear, and see all day that when I check HN it feels like walking out of a really loud room in to a really quiet one.

If the stories deal with the technology of elections (Voting machines) and/or elections getting hacked, I'd say YES. Especially if it's being discussed to greater depth than at non-technical outlets.

Both of these options are very similar ;)

Ignoring that, though, the fact of the matter is that I don't think most of us come here for political discussion (I know I don't). If I want that, I'll go to Reddit for the immature discussion, or to the major news outlets for the latest update. This is a community of entrepreneurs and, while the elections are important, I don't think having multiple election stories here is appropriate discussion material. Someone winning, sure -- that's news that affects the entire world -- but I'd limit it to a single discussion on the winner.

This is a community of entrepreneurs

The site started out as "Startup News" but they broadened it shortly after to be "Hacker News."

"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. "

Broadened? Start-ups and hacking are very different categories, and there is very little in the intersection. This site being for start-ups had too much material that wasn't interesting for hackers, and as the main target of the site was hackers anyway, the focus was put on hacking, maybe very near the intersection.

The most impressive thing I've ever seen on the internet is the way Slashdot ignored the Sept. 11th attacks.

It's true that if you allow them everyone will vote them up and talk about them. But so what? That's like saying that all magazines should put Paris Hilton on the front cover.

Editorial influence is why this site will succeed where others have failed. We don't need editorial influence to ban stories we hate, like spam. We need editorial influence to ban stories we like, for the good of the site.

In honor of the election, we should be allowed to make hyperlinks instead of being forced to paste URLs.

/ducks

No, not even if they're 'really big'. This isn't 'Headline News', it's 'Hacker News'.

Someone actually winning the election is interesting to hackers, because it's interesting to almost everyone.

But if it's not uniquely interesting to hackers, it's already done to death elsewhere.

As per the guidelines: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." There is nothing more covered on TV news recently than elections. It's the national reality game show.

I don't see anything wrong with political debate, so long as it is on-topic, intelligent and civil. And with respect to those qualities, the debates here are better than most.

Moreover, there's no fundamental reason that "hackers" can't be interested in the world around them, so any argument that simply defines political discussions as off-topic is a non-starter for me. If a discussion is intelligent and technical, then it strikes me as a discussion that a "hacker" might have -- regardless of the subject matter.

I agree.

As long as it's not an echo chamber.

I've seen boards with intelligent, long-running discussions that were very interesting. You'd think with a bunch of smart guys here we'd be able to figure out how to replicate that.

No, that's why I get the Post (Washington, not New York).

The election is almost over, I mean there is really nothing new that can come up. And even if it does, people can get the news elsewhere.

So my choice is to keep politics out, and instead just have one thread on the 4th to discuss the results

Is there a neither option? It doesn't seem so bad that it needs fixing yet.

Little late on this one pg.

I'm very interested in election news, but I get plenty of it elsewhere. Allowing the two or three biggest stories of the day would guarantee that anyone who cared would already know.

Thank goodness

I don't think you can keep it out. But the problem is 1) mob rules (which pisses off dissenters and makes the board just another political hack job), and 2) it's too easy and tempting to be a hypocrite (as you noted)

So allow the stories this one time. But turn off voting (if you can). Have the editors place them at the top and handle the comments in chronological order. Let us all have at it. Just don't turn the place into total crap.

I'm voting "no" because I don't think this is possible.

No.

I don't see it as a major issue. The election will be over in less than a week. I'd rather allow stories about it, because all being equal, I favor fewer rules over more.

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