Can we migrate to an open-source alternative to Hacker News already?
replies(2):
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.
As someone whose moderating experience was unpaid, I can tell you part of the reason for that: We resent having to deal with assholes who make our jobs difficult and don't appreciate us giving our time and energy to the site for free, because we believe in the cause.
No, it is not a neutral forum. There is no such thing.
Also, my honest feeling is "Feel free to start one." That isn't snark, but I assume it would be interpreted as such because you are asking people to start this rather than saying "Hey, guys, I am tired of this and I have started an open source version over at (THIS LINK) and if you are as fed up with HN as I am, hey, here is an alternative."
People who propose the kind of seemingly idealistic suggestions of the sort you are proposing almost never want to roll up their sleeves and do the work -- because, hey, work is hard and no one is paying them and yadda. Which is likely why HN is the place to be for so many people: Because it is well moderated by folks who get paid, because it supports a business agenda and doesn't need ads or the like to pay the bills. The business -- YC -- is plenty successful and can afford to support the forum for its purposes in a way that doesn't unduly impinge on what people can discuss here.