[flagged]
There are quite a few sites whose content is mostly skewed but which occasionally publish good articles that, for whatever reason, wouldn't get published by less tendentious sites. Our approach is to downweight such sites but not to ban them, and to turn the penalty off when an article seems good for HN—that is, intellectually interesting and not too repetitive of what has been discussed recently. Needless to say (I hope?), we do this irrespective of ideological orientation, so you'll find articles appearing here from all kinds of sources.
The longer we've had this policy, the better I think it's held up. For a community organized around intellectual curiosity, it's super important not to miss interesting outlier articles. Finding something interesting doesn't imply that one agrees with it, and turning off the penalty on a particular submission doesn't imply that one endorses everything else on a site.
Guilt by association has pros and cons—it can be a useful shortcut, but fails badly when it does fail, and when applied repeatedly it has a slippery-slope downside that can get pretty bad. Still, I don't think your argument is wrong; I just think it's a tradeoff and the question is which side of the tradeoff one should take.
In HN's case, many tradeoffs are resolvable by remembering that there's only one thing we're trying to optimize for*: intellectual curiosity. I think this principle (of evaluating articles rather than sites) follows pretty easily from that.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
I think this article is a tough case. This is an interesting and intellectually curious article, but it is not separable completely from the rest of the website - there is a large "EXTRA! Listen to 'The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling'" which is ideological flamebait that would not be allowed on HN, along with most of the rest of the website.
Has HN ever considered amending the "original source" policy to use the internet archive rather than the original for specific websites which are almost completely flamebait but do sometimes have good quality articles?
Just an idea :)
It sounds like we're agreeing. See what I wrote above about tradeoffs; I was editing and might have added it after you posted (sorry).
> there is a large "EXTRA! Listen to 'The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling'" which is ideological flamebait that would not be allowed on HN, along with most of the rest of the website
Yes, that's one problem with tendentious sites: it's hard to evaluate an article independently of the provocations one encounters in situ. I think that's what we have to do, though. It's probably helpful to remember that this approach ends up irritating everyone in the long run—that is, whatever any reader's buttons are, something's going to occasionally appear on HN that pushes them—at least, if we're applying the policy correctly.
> use the internet archive rather than the original
I don't think that would help; it would just push the provocation to a different spot under the carpet. For example we'd get second-order flamewars about why site X was getting that treatment but not site Y. And I think it's pretty core to HN to have the (original) domain displayed beside a title.
I already listened to much of it, but gave up on the 5th episode in frustration. For a podcast series about J.K. Rowling, there is very little of her voice in it. It's mostly audio from an interview recorded a year or more ago that has been padded out immensely by inclusion of often-immaterial commentary from frankly bloggers and video streamers. Judging by accent, almost all are Americans, not British, and their analyses are invariably superficial. Essentially, the interviewer asks them to give an impression of what was happening years ago on the online fora where they were spending their time.
If they just released the audio for the interview alone, only interrupting for adding context and not commentary, it would be interesting. A desire, I think, to milk it for all it's worth ruined it for me.
And to the point of the original article posted, whatever you think of its contents, my God was it badly written!
If anything, "The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling" is intellectually rich and fascinating. Almost everybody who bothered to open their minds and actually listen to it is incredibly positive about it. It's incredibly thorough. Not only does it discuss the controversy from different angles, it also does a deep dive on the roots of online activism. It's near impossible to not learn something from it.
It's not "ideological flamebait", it's a well-researched master piece.
Had you given some right-wing/left-wing cheap shot, you'd have a point, but this isn't it. Perhaps the time you spent on silencing articles or entire publications should be spent on actual curiosity.
"The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling" seems to qualify as clickbait, it's title is intended to provoke, while reading the podcast episode summaries it seems to be well researched and interesting. I admit, I did not research it beyond the provocative title and that most other articles on the site are ideological flamebait.
It's usually not worth it. And this equally applies to publications with a left-liberal bent, like say the Washington Post. I appreciate the rec, though.
I don't think it's necessary to be this combative, and I think it's responses like these that encourage people to never admit any wrong on the internet. HN typically _tries_ to be above this.
I didn't try to suppress any articles, but I do encourage you to suppress your anger, because, it's probably not worth it :)
I was firm but not out of hate. I was hoping that you'd take it as a lesson learned whether you would publicly admit to that or not. It's admirable that you did. We all make mistakes and we're not static creatures.
This conversation is progress.
Further, I'm dutch and from the 80s. This would actually be my most well-behaved mild tone on a good day. A special adaptation for HN.
Since I may have you emotionally captive here, I'm really curious:
What is your strategy for separating interesting wheat from flamebait chaff? I try to do my "due diligence" but it is exhausting and frequently frustrating to follow what appears to be clickbait and see where it lands. But I'm a'merican zoomer so maybe that's, just, not my vibe, or whatever.
From what I've read she's a pretty run-of-the-mill liberal who's had some disagreements with the current orthodoxy of the left. That doesn't make her a tiki-torch bearing radical.
Recently a feminist on Twitter expressed this problem quite well. She was pushing back against the toxic parts of radical feminism which she considered counter productive. But in doing so, got a lot of heat from the radicals. She's very much left-wing, progressive, and reasonable. The side effect of her pushing back against left-wing extremism is that she gained a lot of attention from the right wing. Actual right wing, not "anybody that slightly disagrees".
She didn't ask for that nor does she want to chose between these two extremes, but that's the dynamic right now.
I don't know anything about the specific situation you're alluding to so can't responsibly comment. But "the leftists made me turn to the right" has been an excuse as long as I can remember and it's a thin one. Radicals simply aren't responsible for the actions their opponents choose to take.
It's not "leftists made me turn right" in all cases, it's also formerly progressive points (equality instead of equity, freedom of speech, science over safetyism) shifting into being seen as right-wing positions. The position didn't change, the label did.
As to whether this is the case with Weiss, supposedly not. I believe you.
Radicals may not be responsible for the actions of opponents, but for sure they are accountable. Or at the very least deal with the predictable back-lash.
This is just the nature of these things. They aren't fixed. They're descriptions of views of different groups of people at a certain time, and change with time.
My childhood overlapped with the aftermath and social remnants of jim crow. Back then, there, a moderate position was that integration was inevitable and necessary for technical constitutional law reasons and to prevent wider upheaval, but that it should not have been welcomed and was allowed to progress too quickly. Only a radical leftist would hold that black and white people were fundamentally equal and the law and social norms must be immediately brought to respect that.
Within my memory, a centrist position was that gay men should be medically treated for that "disorder" rather than pursued criminally for it. A radical leftist position was that they should be allowed to openly participate as full members of society without restriction.
You're right that what is considered left or right changes. Center positions do often become far right positions with time. Sorry lol. It still isn't the fault of leftists.
In reality it's much more of a mixed bag. Some ideas are impractical, downright destructive or achieve the exact opposite.
Unappealing unhinged ideas that alienate large groups and act as the perfect recruitment tool for the right wing? Absolutely the fault of leftists.
But agree to disagree, this isn't the place.