←back to thread

1630 points dang | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.239s | 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
jowiar ◴[] No.13109053[source]
When "politics" is treated as "things that affect other people that we opine about", this decision makes sense.

But this decision is the epitome of privilege. To enter a space thinking "I'm not going to think about politics" is to be someone whose sheer existence in that space isn't a political statement in and of itself. And for many, such a space is "The United States", "The Tech Community", "HN", or whatnot.

Saying "We're going to forget y'all for a week" is... just... fucking... terrible. And whoever conceived of it should be fired on the spot.

replies(5): >>13109467 #>>13109534 #>>13109690 #>>13110517 #>>13110531 #
comex ◴[] No.13109467[source]
This is a pretty well-constructed argument, despite the unnecessary invective at the end. It took me a while to figure out how to rebut it. (Therefore I upvoted you to counter expected downvotes.)

But I think it goes like this: there's a difference between not caring about something for a week and not talking about it. If, as you assume, for most of HN politics is "things that affect other people", then the primary objective of political discussions on HN should be to convince those people - not, say, to make the minority which is affected feel validated. My impression is that when people who are affected by something go and read a ton of Very Strong Opinions put forward by people who aren't, the result is usually more invalidating than validating; validation is important but is a purpose better served by more focused communities. Now, when it comes to convincing people, a constant barrage of discussions on the same topic is probably more unhelpful than helpful; at worst, pausing discussions for a week (which gives them time to reflect) is unlikely to be very harmful.

Notwithstanding that, some people may perceive the idea of taking a break as invalidating, because it reminds them of a generalization about the community (not affected) which does not apply to them. However, so far as it's an accurate generalization, this seems like it can't be helped. I suppose you could argue that it seems more accurate than it really is, since marginalized people are present but silenced…

Anyway, I think "things that affect other people" is an oversimplification to start with. A lot of the specific political topics people like to discuss on this site, like encryption/surveillance, have fairly little direct impact on pretty much any of us; others, like the economy, affect all of us to some extent, albeit some more than others.

replies(2): >>13111913 #>>13111926 #
1. adrienne ◴[] No.13111926[source]
Like, i really do feel unwelcome here. And this "experiment" makes me feel more unwelcome - not because it's an experiment, i'm all in favor of those, but because i really don't think it is one. I think it's a pretty clear signal about what the moderators value, and how they think.