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.
Assuming bad faith without evidence is a big part of the issue here.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.