I'm a late adopter of HN, but was a bit surprised to see nothing about Israel/Hamas on the home page. Is that sort of political stuff forbidden, or is there just no interest in this community?
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
The most recent fluctuations of the war between Israel and its neighbors that has been going on literally since Israel existed with lulls but rarely more than a few weeks without new armed attacks or human rights abuses directed by one side against the other (and with, on both sides, deliberate or indiscriminate targeting, and systematic collective punishment of civilians being more a norm than an exception, with the excuse that what the other side is doing justifies it, makes even events that feature these not novel phenomena even in the context of the specific conflict.)
The guideline criteria say not to submit flamebait, to submit things with interesting, novel intellectual discussion, and generally nothing that is on tv news.
I would imagine that the decades long Israeli/Palestinian conflict would violate all three.
So would the Russian/Ukrainian conflict, and yet[1]
Because it isn't reddit. I'm sure this forum is full of Israeli but also Muslim devs, do you really want that kind of strife on HN? I don't. There is no way that kind of discussion will not devolved into a giant mess.
It's even not because it's controversial, there has been outrageous topics on this forum (from my perspective), but it's already discussed everywhere else, with the exact same predictable results...
These rules are either applied unfairly or the community is full of shills that make it appear that way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35445867 (121 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37310772 (171 comments)
Calling it boring — as if it had the potential to entertain - seems an bit insensitive to all the victims of the current and past hostilities.
Idgaf what nationality people are. When they commit acts like these, they are _not_ fighting for freedom, and they are _not_ worthy of any kind of respect. If it’s Americans, Russians, Chinese, Germans, or Palestinians committing these atrocities, it is disgusting, and they are _terrorists_, and I really hope that there is swift and harsh retaliation against these horrible human rights violators.
I know Israelis want everyone to just move on from how bloody of a process it was to displace nearly one million indigenous Palestinians prior to announcing the foundation of their state. Unfortunately/fortunately — depending on your politics — we are (1) in modern times so most people don’t take kindly to European settler-colonial efforts and (2) the discomfort of Israelis with their history won’t erase the bloody genesis…
Just look at this story - the reasons it's considered "reasonable" for HN is because the framing is a technological story (internet traffic spike). That then also gives a small space for some people to discuss other aspects of this.
And most of the posts are technical discussions about the implications of the war, like Russia trying to get an airplane to fly out of a wheat field; not inane “X has progressed 200 meters” or whatnot.
In general, even if it's submitted, it's up to a bunch of clicks on the small arrows to keep it on the first page, and other submissions might win instead.
Even if there was a "it must be about hardware or software" rule, that wouldn't be such a bad thing, otherwise we'd just end up getting another reddit.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.