←back to thread

1630 points dang | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.207s | 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
pmoriarty ◴[] No.13109579[source]
I am concerned that in the long run political stories about HN and Y Combinator, and about the tech scene will be excluded.

Where better to talk about the politics of HN and Y Combinator than on HN? As far as political stories go, these are the most relevant ones to HN readers. Political stories about the tech scene, and related topics (such as political reactions to tech employees grabbing up all the real estate in certain tech-heavy cities like SF) are also very relevant.

I would be more ok with the banning of non-tech-related political stories/threads. But, I think a better solution than censorship would be tagging. Tagging would allow every reader to do their own filtering, and include/exclude what they felt was appropriate, rather than have those decisions dictated top-down.

On the other hand, I also understand the desire of the site owners/admins to guide the site to be what they want it to be, rather than what its users want it to be. That's definitely their prerogative, and much of it I agree with - particularly the censorship of hate speech, flaming, and trolling.

The guiding of this site towards more tech and less politics is also a desire I understand and commiserate with. There definitely are plenty of other political sites out there, where you can argue this stuff 'till the cows come home. But personally, I don't visit those sites, and would like to be able to discuss at least some of those topics -- the ones relevant to tech and to HN/YC, on HN itself.

replies(2): >>13109758 #>>13113676 #
1. hawski ◴[] No.13113676[source]
There could be "politics" tag for stories and comments. If moderation would want it could penalize tagged content like it does with Ask HN. It can hid tagged content by default and one could enable it in profile (like Show dead).

Political discussion in many technical stories irks me, especially if it goes to the top. But I understand that it is sometimes valuable. Just like offtopic mentions of technical issues of the medium (horrible font etc.). Maybe it would be good to put it all to big bag called "offtopic" or something and put it always at the bottom of comment threads and stories list with ability to hid them in profile settings.