For one week, political stories are off-topic. Please flag them. Please also flag political threads on non-political stories. For our part, we'll kill such stories and threads when we see them. Then we'll watch together to see what happens.
Why? Political conflicts cause harm here. The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those things are lost when political emotions seize control. Our values are fragile—they're like plants that get forgotten, then trampled and scorched in combat. HN is a garden, politics is war by other means, and war and gardening don't mix.
Worse, these harsher patterns can spread through the rest of the culture, threatening the community as a whole. A detox week seems like a good way to strengthen the immune system and to see how HN functions under altered conditions.
Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones. We can't be both at the same time.
A community like HN deteriorates when new developments dilute or poison what it originally stood for. We don't want that to happen, so let's all get clear on what this site is for. What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive comments. What it is not: a political, ideological, national, racial, or religious battlefield.
Have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we'll try to allay them. This really is an experiment; we don't have an opinion yet about longer-term changes. Our hope is that we can learn together by watching what happens when we try something new.
Who is SamA?
It has to do with us noticing an uptick in two undesirable things: harsh ideological comments, and accounts that use HN primarily for political battle.
You can see one example of how the idea developed here:
Assuming bad faith without evidence is a big part of the issue here.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, 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.
My opinion is that this place is great for two reasons: It's narrow focus on one topic, and a userbase that consists of experts in that one topic. When Hacker News strays from it's area of expertise I feel that Gell-Mann Amnesia is apparent and the quality of discussion much lower. Again not just for the politics but for other random news as well.
One of the things I've found most impressive about HN, in fact, is the fashion in which people disposed across the full width of the US political spectrum seem able here to discuss potentially divisive subjects in a civil and perhaps even constructive fashion - I can't speak for anyone else, but I can say that comments here have given me pause for thought, and on occasion to significantly reconsider opinions that I've held - not all of which I still do. This isn't to say that I'm politically progressive or at all likely to become so, but I have found uniquely valuable some of the political discussion which has occurred on HN, and the degree of dispassionate consideration and tenor of general civility I've seen in such discussions here are unique in my experience.
The point I raise isn't that I think the "political detox week" is a bad idea. (Or a good one - time will tell.) But I do think it would be a shame if political discussion were banned or severely curtailed on HN in future. Such a decision seems to me as though it could only be a deliberate effort to invoke the "echo chamber" effect which has redounded to such cost throughout US politics in recent years and especially in recent months. That's something I've seen happening to a broad extent on both ends of the political spectrum lately, and especially since the election. No one on either side seems willing to hear anything from anyone on the other - except here, and I think there's value in that.
Perhaps I'm alone, or nearly so, in this opinion. But perhaps I'm not, too. And even if I am, it still seems worth throwing out there. In an increasingly polarized political environment (and I say this as a veteran of the 2000 election and all that followed it!), HN seems as close as anything I've participated in, seen, or heard of, to a demilitarized zone where parties on both sides can meet and interact in something approaching a constructive fashion. I realize that's not HN's intended purpose, and I don't blame the mods here if they decide that's not what they want to run. But I do think it's something that'd be a shame to lose.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> 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.
You specifically asked "What's the ulterior motive here?" which implies you think there is an ulterior motive. An ulterior motive would be acting in bad faith, since it would by definition be different than the expressed motive, since the reasoning was clearly expressed above.
Presentation matters. Whether you meant it to be or not, your statement is somewhat inflammatory, for the reasons I just outlined. In my opinion, it's also a very good reason why the temporary ban is a good idea.
That's straightforward, and understandable.
Personally, though, I would want to measure that in some way. We all tend to notice harsh comments or politicized accounts when they are in opposition to our world view. Ones that we agree with might fly under the radar.
I was very specific to outline an additional condition which I think makes all the difference, which is that you were presented with the reason for the action. Assuming an ulterior motive when you've already been given an explicit motive is assuming they are acting in bad faith, and that that they've provided a reason that does not match reality.
From my perspective, this is not very odd because HN is not a general purpose message board. The guidelines have always outlined what is on and off topic, and politics has always been considered off topic. It seems like a very reasonable experiment.
> I was skeptical about the reason dang
As to this, I'm not sure I have the same skepticism you do in this regard. HN has a history of flagging overly political stories, as it can often be hard to keep discussion civil. There seems to be less flagging of these as the election gets close, as it's more relevant to everyone involved, but trying to cut back after the election is past seems appropriate to me.
Step 2: Figure out a way to Avoid Problem
Step 3: Attain Nirvana
https://medium.com/projectinclude/peter-thiel-yc-and-hard-de...
> But Thiel’s actions are in direct conflict with our values at Project Include. Because of his continued connection to YC, we are compelled to break off our relationship with YC. =Ellen Pao
> There seems to be less flagging of these as the election gets close, as it's more relevant to everyone involved, but trying to cut back after the election is past seems appropriate to me.
I go back and forth on this one for a few reasons. Political diatribes are irritating and usually fruitless, but this is a very different election (and so far post election). The mere fact that the president-elect wants to increase tariffs, limit H1B visas, penalize moving business off-shore is very pertinent to the tech industry, so I think discussion on those topics are 'fair game' in the HN-sphere of discussion. In one hand I see what dang is trying to accomplish, at least I think I do, by making comments on HN less sharp and more tolerable/friendly, but in the other hand for the most part HN users have intelligent, useful conversations and as long as there is civil discussion a ban seems unnecessary.
At the end of the day it doesn't matter, but if there is an ulterior motive I'd be more comfortable knowing that it exists and why it exists... it's always helpful to 'know your audience'. I didnt mean to be accusatory in any manner, more just curious.