Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

The guidelines indicate that most political articles are off topic:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. it's probably off-topic.

Political articles really should not be here: it's a poisonous topic that, on a site like this, usually just rehashes the same old things, which makes them not particularly 'gratifying of one's intellectual curiosity'.

This article isn't really obscure, it appeared on Bloomberg.com, and the Argentinean government fooling around with foreign exchange, banks, and statistics is not really news either.

An example of an article that I think would be more in the spirit of hacker news might be something about options trading evolving between medieval Florence and Flanders, or something like that...

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I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but in my view, the article isn't just 'political'. With currency and money involved, there is an 'economic' angle that I, personally, want to learn about. And with a government being involved, there are moral/philosophical issues that I, personally, want to learn about. So for me, this article gratifies my intellectual curiosity.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the link may seem off-topic to you, but it's highly relevant to me. And there's nothing wrong with any of that. And of course, just because an article shows up here doesn't mean you have to read it :)

The front page is a zero-sum game. Every article that appears does so at the expense of another article. The articles that appear on the front page get the most comments, which drive the community.

I'm not arguing against this article, nor am I arguing that all articles on the front page should appeal to me. However, I am arguing that your final line of reasoning does not hold in general.

I disagree that the front page is a zero-sum game. A front page filled with good variety has more value than a front page filled with repetitive articles on the same basic subjects. Whether this particular article is good variety or not is beyond what I'm willing to address, but I don't think it's correct to describe the front page as a zero-sum game, and too much conformity can be harmful.

I think you're correct that I misused "zero-sum," since the utility of the front page is not always the same; it can increase or decrease based on the quality of the articles. I incorrectly used it to describe a situation where the gain for one is the loss of another, which is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a zero-sum game.

Regarding your point, I think we're dangerously veering into platitudes. Of course I agree that a front page with "good" variety is better than a page with "repetitive" articles. And of course I agree that "too much conformity" is a bad thing. But I was originally countering the commonly spoken notion "If you don't like it, don't read it!" Because of the gain-for-one-is-loss-for-another nature of the front page, exactly what appears on the front page drives the community. If too many off-topic posts become the norm, HN will become a general interest site, and lose the community that makes it so valuable.

edit: There is zero reason to downvote mikeash. I tried to correct with an upvote of my own, but apparently at least two HN readers are mistaken.

That makes me wonder about what the economics of having a dynamic number of articles in the front page instead of the fixed 30 would look like.

This isn't exactly advanced economics though - it's the kind of thing you can easily learn about by reading actual books, rather than an article with a scant few paragraphs. A subscription to The Economist, even if it's current events, rather than economics, will also get you way more articles like it, but with more detail.

And your "moral and philosophical" discussions are exactly the sort of thing that turns into flame wars. I'm 100% sure there are people on HN who think, for instance, that taxes are immoral. Others are for high taxes, especially on the wealthy. Do we really need to get into that? Do you think anyone will emerge with their point of view radically shifted?

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