←back to thread

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
tarikjn ◴[05 Dec 16 19:44 UTC] No.13108655[source]▶
I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a scientific community, but it is not the case, and even then politics do interact with science, as one can conduct scientific experiments on government decisions, or politics can attack scientific community positions (e.g. climate change).

The way this sounds is that you are more concerned about politics as in people who take party positions and may feel excluded as a group when the majority of the community takes a different position. This is a slightly different issue i.e. party politics, and I think it is fine/a good thing, but it is also important to distinguish the two. This should essentially be under the same umbrella as personal attacks, as they are essentially the same thing.

replies(36): >>13108789 #>>13108826 #>>13108956 #>>13109024 #>>13109085 #>>13109124 #>>13109126 #>>13109160 #>>13109168 #>>13109250 #>>13109253 #>>13109552 #>>13109613 #>>13109650 #>>13109771 #>>13109861 #>>13109881 #>>13110130 #>>13110143 #>>13110264 #>>13110288 #>>13110291 #>>13110317 #>>13110358 #>>13110359 #>>13110619 #>>13110735 #>>13110742 #>>13110784 #>>13110864 #>>13110921 #>>13110996 #>>13111010 #>>13111196 #>>13111315 #>>13111420 #
OJFord ◴[05 Dec 16 23:35 UTC] No.13110921[source]▶
I too find this to be an argumentum ad absurdum.

    > The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity
    > and thoughtful conversation.

    > For one week, political stories are off-topic.
That said, I can support:

    > Those things are lost when political emotions seize
    > control.
This ban should be on political emotions seizing control; not on intellectual conversation surrounding political stories.
replies(1): >>13110954 #
dang ◴[05 Dec 16 23:42 UTC] No.13110954[source]▶
In theory, yes, of course.

In practice, that distinction doesn't hold up—not on the public internet and not at scale. The discussions are tribal.

I'd be happy to say "No Tribalism on HN" but how would we enforce it and how could anyone comply? Tribalism is not something people have conscious control over.

replies(3): >>13111001 #>>13111408 #>>13112279 #
OJFord ◴[05 Dec 16 23:50 UTC] No.13111001[source]▶
For many, HN is a source of news, not just conversation.

Perhaps a reasonable compromise could be to 'close' comments on such stories, rather than removing the links altogether?

In re your tribalism update - is 'tribalism' itself an issue? I don't think I personally mind someone being 'tribal' so long as their arguments are polite and reasoned.

replies(2): >>13111427 #>>13117758 #
1. dang ◴[06 Dec 16 19:57 UTC] No.13117758{3}[source]▶
> Perhaps a reasonable compromise could be to 'close' comments on such stories, rather than removing the links altogether?

It's an interesting suggestion, and of course one that major media sites have run with.

In an HN context, it feels to me like one of those 'easy' fixes that make short-term pain go away, but at the expense of something valuable in the long run. My sense is that, uncomfortable as it is, it's best to stay within the contradictory situation and look for small improvements.

HN is in a position to do that where larger sites are not, so we might be able to make a contribution here.