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1630 points dang | 9 comments | | HN request time: 0.257s | source | bottom

Like everyone else, HN has been on a political binge lately. As an experiment, we're going to try something new and have a cleanse. Starting today, it's Political Detox Week on HN.

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.

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ProAm ◴[] No.13108471[source]
I'm a little skeptical of this.... What's the ulterior motive here? We all know SamA was very anti-trump, is this an alternative method to keep the new US political regime from affecting YC? It's almost a weird form of discussion censorship. Whose idea was this?
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1. dang ◴[] No.13108484[source]
It was my idea and has nothing to do with political preferences, though the election season was probably a factor.

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:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052458

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2. baddox ◴[] No.13108599[source]
Do you have real data showing that there has been an uptick in those two things (however you've defined them), or is it possible that the apparent uptick is caused by something else, like confirmation bias or your own weariness of recent political discussion/events?
3. ProAm ◴[] No.13108621[source]
Interesting, I have noticed the change in discussion but a ban seems a swing too far in the other direction, but it also no go unfettered. I guess we'll see how it goes. I'd like to see what gets defined as being 'political'. To play devils advocate there are several YC backed companies that lobby and contribute to politicians.
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4. throwanem ◴[] No.13108694[source]
It wouldn't necessarily surprise me to learn that my account is one of those latter, although it would disappoint me a little and cause me to question my approach, since "battle" really isn't a good characterization of what I'm after here.

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.

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5. TrevorJ ◴[] No.13108914[source]
With respect, technology is at the nexus of politics now, like it or not. What possible case can be made that questions of technology are not, as of now, central to the debate on many political fronts? Should we not be leading the charge for robust and informed discussions of the role of technology in the political sphere? If not us then who?
6. RangerScience ◴[] No.13109001[source]
Hear, hear! I came to HN specifically to check comments on political news items, because I (generally) found them pretty insightful and excellent.
7. tyingq ◴[] No.13109396[source]
>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.

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.

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8. 6stringmerc ◴[] No.13110089[source]
Step 1: Identify Problem

Step 2: Figure out a way to Avoid Problem

Step 3: Attain Nirvana

9. Frqy3 ◴[] No.13113012[source]
I think defining political is going to be tricky. For example, is a discussion about fake news vs censorship political? Is the answer different if we are talking about China vs the US? What about discussing a company that provides fake news detection as service?