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Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

1630 points dang | 1 comments | 05 Dec 16 19:24 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

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.

Show context
rustyfe ◴[05 Dec 16 19:37 UTC] No.13108553[source]▶
One question that interests/concerns me is making judgement calls about what is/is not a political story.

Some links will be cut and dry, some will not. Some comments will be immediately identified as political, some will just be politics adjacent.

For instance, on a story about self driving cars, will it be appropriate to talk about UBI? On a story about cryptography, will it be acceptable to talk about how it applies to political dissidents?

Still, I have always found HN moderation to be reasonable, and I expect this to be the same. This is also something I think is desperately needed, we could all use a cooling off period, and it'll be nice not to be bombarded with US politics from yet another angle.

Hoping for the best, thanks dang + crew!

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dang ◴[05 Dec 16 19:41 UTC] No.13108614[source]▶
Right, it's not possible to define "politics" precisely, and it would be a mistake to try. But there's nothing new in that; the HN guidelines have always mentioned politics without defining the term, and we get by.

We can clarify, though. The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet. We're not so concerned about stories on other things that happen to have political aspects—like, say, software patents. Those stories aren't going to be evicted from HN or anything like that. For this week, though, let's err on the side of flagging because it will make the experiment more interesting.

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mbesto ◴[05 Dec 16 20:02 UTC] No.13108867[source]▶
I have an idea - if it's in reference to a topic of CNN, NYT, WSJ, and WaPo's politics sections then it shouldn't be on HN.
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1. karambahh ◴[05 Dec 16 21:12 UTC] No.13109646[source]▶
What if a tech topic (say the current Amazon Go thread) sparks a debate about 'is it socially acceptable or not?'

If the story gets big enough, the articles about Amazon Go's impact on workers will move from the tech section to the politics section of the newspapers. Where do you draw the line on HN in that case? Once they have move in the WaPo, we should stop talking about them?

I agree with others that moderating such a large online community is probably very hard and that dang and others probably experience bad times when comments thread inflame, but I think that a blanket ban on affairs of the cities is not the way to go.

Actually, I find it quite funny that we are having this debate, because in essence that is a political debate. Some US posters will consider it as hampering their right to free speech, some others will consider that making that space void of any political discussions is fine, some (as myself :-) ) think it is impossible and impractical... Debate around the frontiers of that is admitted here is entirely political, in the noble sense of the word.

As long as our debate is civil (and as far as I can see, it is), I think we should be allowed to have it. And what if my comments are not interesting and bring nothing to the debate? They will be downvoted to hell. HN, in contrast with Reddit, has apparently a very good track record with karma. It seems that brigading is not practiced around here.

I think it is probably linked to the fact that under a certain thresold, you cannot down-vote. My karma is indeed too low to downvote for instance and at first I was uneasy with the fact that I couldn't downvote...but I think I am starting to understand why it is actually a good rule for the board ;-)