PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN

So here's a startup idea: create an HN-like forum for topics that are usually avoided on HN. Such as politics.

And the only way to have a civil politics forum is to have some professional moderator like dang who can step in and explain the rules to anyone who gets carried away a bit too much. Little by little, the users get educated and start enforcing the rules themselves, either via downvotes, or via actual comments.

Wouldn't that be great? In an age of complete political polarization, to have a sanctuary place on the internet where you can go and exchange thoughtful ideas with considerate peers who may or may not share your political alignment, but treat you with respect.

It's a beautiful dream, but I don't think it would work. Quotes from what is civil discourse about heated political topics would get taken out of context, posted on twitter, labeled as hate speech, picked up by the media, and probably end up getting the startup more or less canceled.

Have you seen this subreddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/

Forums are very hard to start. You need a catalyst. HN’s was YC - that’s the bar.

The problem with such an idea is that there's a lot of room for abuse below what can be expressed in the form of rules, which means it can be difficult to moderate without appearing to censor or favor particular sides.

People can be abusive in subtle ways that enter a gray area of civility. For example, a discussion thread that devolves into a combative exchange about what a participant really meant by their comments, and whether that means they're a white supremacist, will eventually become exhausting and pointless, and everyone knows it, but what kind of rule can ban "exhausting and pointless" threads?

But any moderation that can't be enforced on technical terms will start making the enforcers seem subjective and biased. Reddit has a long record of subs abandoned in anger by a large cohort of users because they consider the mods to be unfairly biased, and it's not always the case. Conversely, forums can die if the "good" users think that not enough is being done to shut up problematic users.

I help run a private discussion board that's been active for ten years now. It's great, but it's had its own share of drama. The hardest problem we had was a person who simply incited trouble. He didn't break any rules. He was just a very difficult person, and we knew (through friends of his) that he had mental issues. In the interest of being fair and keeping to our terms of use, we let him stay. While there were people who openly argued that the community should have room for people like him, others complained and started leaving the site, just because of all the heated drama. This went on for years. After several incidents where it just became too much, we decided to ban him permanently. But it was a hard decision. We still have "problem users" who, purely by voicing unpopular opinions (from nationalist/fascist sympathies to belief in anti-vaxx or rejection of Western medicine), incite a lot of heated discussions. They're not breaking any rules, they're just loud and controversial.

I think a discussion board lives and dies by the trust its users put in the moderators.

On our forums we have a special forum called Great Debates that might be interesting to you: https://www.city-data.com/forum/great-debates/.

> where you can go and exchange thoughtful ideas with considerate peers who may or may not share your political alignment, but treat you with respect.

I'll bet that this will never happen for topics like politics.

Politics is a 0 barrier to entry conversation and a maximally emotion driven discussion.

If a forum allows politics, the mod work load goes up and the forum will polarize itself. Politics is one of the natural scissor statements of the web.

Thank you, this looks nice. Do you know something similar for /r/worldnews? Something that's more like what you shared and /r/askhistorians.

Is it possible that we're overvaluing decorum? While the battles going on over ideas on social media are base --- there is still progress. Ideas are being put through the grinder and being put on display for all sorts of people who might never have had that opportunity a few short years ago.

It's quite possible, that while it's hard to watch, it is just the growing pains of a whole new chapter in the evolution of human thought. One that isn't restricted to sophisticated and polished elites.

Maybe the real problem is our aversion to an all out brawl, rather than the fight itself. It's possible that younger people will just be able to deal with it better -- learn how to better cope with and ignore distractions like trolls etc.

I have a slightly different take on this one.

Maybe the problem is the aversion of the all out brawl... but the deeper problem is "who gets to brawl"? In an era of sock puppets and low effort comments, I've thought of a system where only those who at least regularly make very good arguments are allowed into the main event brawl so to speak.

I've thought of this in two ways. Either you have a free for all section on the website all are allowed into and then select from there, or you actually search for users on other websites and try to recruit them.

If you give users incentive to be better so they "get selected", they will respond to that. Then once you get them in you have to reinforce that somehow, and while slashdot made a lot of mistakes, I really like the random mod and metatagging system it used for that. The particulars aside, just doing something to keep the users from devolving is the important part.

>Is it possible that we're overvaluing decorum?

Yes.

Speaking as a minority who sometimes gets downright livid with the responses here to issues where social-issu technology intersect that are simply phrased eloquently and with “proper decorum” but are still pretty deleterious and exclusionary in their markedly disparate impacts and results for people like me-as more emotionally charged (rightfully, I will defend staunchly) comments criticizing such thoughts and opinion turn grey and ultimately get flagged into non-existence.

r/TrueReddit might be close to what you’re looking for.

I'd answer that first question with an emphatic "no", since we already know what happens when decorum goes out the window - we have most other popular forums with a political section to look at. Feelings are hurt, personal attacks come up next, good faith dies, all of those things are anathema to deep discussion. I am aware of no place online, or in real life, where discussion and trolling (or big egos) can coexist.

You don't need sophistication and polish to not be a dick. That's the low water mark, here. Not big words, just please, thankyou, and a willingness to entertain thoughts you disagree with and explain your own.

I'm not sure how you have a civil discussion about inhumane acts that are supported by an oppressive system. Sometimes the only appropriate reaction is outrage. Just as an example I wouldn't engage in a civil conversation about whether or not to interfere with a rape in progress. When you find people demanding a civil conversation about unacceptable behavior, it's a pretty good sign that the entire point is to tone police the outrage and therfore normalize the oppression. Why should anyone consider for even a second to a demand that you must politely ask someone to stop raping a child? It should be called for what it is: a delaying tactic. We actually need more, not less, outrage for some of the problems society tolerates or even encourages. So what you'd most likely find in a political forum that demands polite interaction are mostly folks who are not oppressed and for which there is zero urgency to change things. What you find elsewhere is often ugly and uncomfortable. The real problem is that no one has solved is an extremely difficult one: when is outrage appropriate? Sometimes it is. Too often outrage is thrown around about trivial issues or towards a specific person in a witch hunt sort of way. What we need is to eliminate that while still allowing for appropriate outrage. For sure the fix is not allowing the privileged and the oppressors to decide what is appropriate . I don't have any solution in mind. But I do hope I've brought some nuanced clarity to how difficult a challenge it is to moderate outrage without silencing appropriate outrage.

Some things are urgent and demand outrage. While the Declaration of Independence might at first glance appear to be an example of decoram, it was not. What it said is that we are done entertaining your ideas and will now start to kill those who try to stop us from putting our ideas in place. Outrage is sometimes appropriate.

> our aversion to an all out brawl

This is presuming a lot in the idea that you can keep the "brawl" purely online and at no point leak out into the wider society.

The lesson from everything from the Arab Spring to Hong Kong protests to BLM to mass shooters citing forum posts is that you can't.

I heavily disagree. While outrage at e.g. societal problems might sometimes be appropriate, directing that outrage at forum posters that defend what you call "unnaceptable behaviour" is just a bad idea.

If they actually believe in what they say, you have just further radicalized them. If they don't and just want to provoke, you've played into their hands.

Also, consider if you're actually being honest with yourself. Are the people you are arguing against actually just defending "raping a child"? Giving in to outrage often leads to people ignoring vital parts of the conversation. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-ent...)

> politics

> Wouldn't that be great?

Yes, until 10 years ago or so. Try it today and people, whose idea of a public discourse is to doxx, cancel and threaten people with opposing views, will still harass whoever they can identify if they read something they don't like. Even if they can't post.

> If they actually believe in what they say, you have just further radicalized them.

That's classic victim blaming and no one should take these threats seriously. Any further radicalization of a viewpoint is entirely the responsibility of the person with those views.

> If they don't and just want to provoke, you've played into their hands.

I agree that's a risk.

> Also, consider if you're actually being honest with yourself. Are the people you are arguing against actually just defending "raping a child"? Giving in to outrage often leads to people ignoring vital parts of the conversation.

I agree we have to consider the topic and I did give an extreme example. Yes, I do honestly think some topics that are being debated in society at the moment are just as horrible and as urgent to stop as a child being raped. I also already addressed this in my original comment: "Too often outrage is thrown around about trivial issues or towards a specific person in a witch hunt sort of way."

> (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-ent...)

That article has very little to do with the topic. The author is an expert in marriages and treating people for anger and relationship problems and he goes on to talk about exactly that situation: "Divorce and Being Right". A marriage is ideally a relationship of equals. It has very little to do with an entire group of people being oppressed by society. In most cases we stay in a marriage by choice. There is no easy way to leave society or to replace it with a better alternative.

> Speaking as a minority

Thank you for speaking up. I often think of HN as ivory tower. It feels great for people who have zero urgency to address social issues because those social issues don't affect them in any way. In fact, those social issues might give some of us an undeserved advantage.

It's not a surprise when you consider PG's own desires to forever be in an ivory tower and to blame any criticism of his own faults on angry mobs. He's never wrong in his own eyes and it's pretty clear that comes from a position of privilege.

HN does achieve one goal: I do love it as a place to discuss intellectual ideas. It does come at a cost of largely sweeping social issues under the carpet.

I would love to see an HN with many of the same rules but where membership is truly diverse and where minorities outnumber the privileged. An HN started by a minority and that would not have PG's DNA. I imagine it having everything I love about HN and perhaps a lot less of what I dislike about HN.

I’ve thought once or twice about starting such a forum, but it’d probably be a bad idea because I have an incredibly fuse which probably won’t do well for the community as a forum leader at large. And at this point in time-a historically low tolerance for any manifestation of some of the bad-faith but eloquently delivered “talking points” from people who hold court in various ivory towers. That alone convinced me it’s not a good idea; plus PG’s general advice of not starting a forum overall is probably good advice for anyone who cherishes their mental health these days.

And the end of the day: There are other areas in real tangible life that I’ve decided to focus this energy and righteous indignation towards that are far more fulfilling, but I will still call things out here on HN where appropriate about these types of intersecting issues, and I will take the downvotes but I’m not gonna stop getting right up in people’s faces and challenging some of these things when they come up.

Not on Hacker News, they're not. There is no point in the history of this website (and I'd argue, most if not all social media sites) where outrage has accomplished anything productive or time-sensitive.

> That's classic victim blaming and no one should take these threats seriously. Any further radicalization of a viewpoint is entirely the responsibility of the person with those views.

I don't really think I am victim blaming here. It is simply a fact that an individual often has influence on the situation where they have been the victim. Example: I would never blame a woman who has visited an area with high crime rates for getting raped there. But I still might advise them to e.g. not visit the area at night. I'm not saying it's fair, but I think it's the smart thing to do.

Same thing here. I assume that any person who is the target of a radical group is at least somewhat interested in not creating more members of that group. I'm not saying it's fair, but I think it's the smart thing to do.

> Yes, I do honestly think some topics that are being debated in society at the moment are just as horrible and as urgent to stop as a child being raped.

The key difference is that your example is an issue that allows for immediate action, while (I presume) the issues you are alluding to are of societal and systemic nature. In the analogy, having a civil discussion about the nature of the issue at hand would majorly detract from the victim being rescued. I do not see how this is the case for the actual issues at hand.

> That article has very little to do with the topic.

Agreed. I basically wanted to give context to my claim that giving in to outrage might lead to people filtering out valid arguments and context.

> Certainty itself is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out far more information than it processes, which, of course, greatly increases its already high error rate during emotional arousal. In other words, the more certain you feel, the more likely you are wrong in some respect.

> Mental focus, the foundation of feelings of certainty, distorts reality by magnifying and amplifying one or two aspects of it while filtering out everything else. You might discover more detail about the one or two aspects you focus on, but what you discover will have no contextual meaning, because you have isolated those aspects from their dynamic interaction with the rest of the reality in which they exist. In other words, focus magnifies things out of proportion and blows them out of context.

What I'm trying to get at is that I think it is very possible to discuss a situation that, in the eyes of at least one of the participants of the discussion, is worthy of outrage without actually displaying that outrage and staying civil. To again use rape as an example, I think it is entirely reasonable to consider the experiences, pain and outrage of rape victims and their supporters valid, while still wanting them to be involved in civil discussions about the issues of false accusations and due process. (If they are willing to do so, of course)

Intuitively understand your concerns about groups of oppressed people possibly not feeling welcome in a completely outrage-free environment, but to me that seems totally unverifiable. Someone could argue for the complete reverse and that would probably be just as valid.

Agreed that nothing is urgent here. It's intentionally an ivory tower. Which is great if society already treats you well.

> It is simply a fact that an individual often has influence on the situation where they have been the victim.

That's victim blaming. And definitely not appropriate when we are talking about society oppressing someone. No one person can control society. And if you belong to a minority, the group you belong to has a much smaller voice when it comes to influencing society.

> I assume that any person who is the target of a radical group is at least somewhat interested in not creating more members of that group.

You keep saying that it creates more members of a radical group, but that's not true. No one becomes the member of a radical group just because someone else is outraged that they are suffering from injustice.

And history says you are wrong. From the American Revolutionary war, to the Civil War, the the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and to today's black lives matter movement what we have seen is the opposite: the more outrage there is over social injustice the more people eventually decide that the injustice we tolerated in the past is no longer acceptable. When you see conservative four star generals speak up and say we have to do something about racial justice in the USA, you know that the outrage has finally worked. We are on our way to fixing things. The vast majority of the US is moral. And as uncomfortable as outrage might be to us at first, we eventually do listen.

> That's victim blaming. And definitely not appropriate when we are talking about society oppressing someone. No one person can control society. And if you belong to a minority, the group you belong to has a much smaller voice when it comes to influencing society.

I genuinely do not understand how someone could possibly claim that simply acknowledging that a victim has influence on their situation is already victim blaming. It's horrible that people even have to think about how best avoid being victimized, yes totally. They should not have to. But that does not mean it should be impermissible to suggest ways they can act in their best interest.

> You keep saying that it creates more members of a radical group, but that's not true. No one becomes the member of a radical group just because someone else is outraged that they are suffering from injustice.

I'm not convinced. Many people convert to radical groups because they feel ostracized by the mainstream. Screaming "FUCK YOU RACIST! GO DIE" at a forum poster will only push them further right. Engaging with "I think you are mistaken, here is why" might cause them to reconsider at least part of their worldview.

> And history says you are wrong. From the American Revolutionary war, to the Civil War, the the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and to today's black lives matter movement what we have seen is the opposite: the more outrage there is over social injustice the more people eventually decide that the injustice we tolerated in the past is no longer acceptable.

Would you disagree that there might be a better way of achieving change than letting it spiral into an all-out war? That seems a bit accelerationionist-y and I presume that's not what you actually want.

> We are on our way to fixing things.

I think your optimism is a bit premature.

> I genuinely do not understand how someone could possibly claim that simply acknowledging that a victim has influence on their situation is already victim blaming.

The dangerous neighborhood example is such a classic that it's easy to find. Items 5 and 9 on this list: https://msmagazine.com/2013/05/28/rape-splaining-10-examples...

> Screaming "FUCK YOU RACIST! GO DIE" at a forum poster will only push them further right.

No it won't. What you are advocating for is tone policing. You are claiming that reasonable outrage is going to radicalize people and therefor people should not express anger when they have every right to be angry. "If she had calmed down, I wouldn't have hit her". Classic abuser and oppressor excuse.

> Would you disagree that there might be a better way of achieving change than letting it spiral into an all-out war?

Yes there is a better way. People should listen to outrage and fix things before it's too late. That onus is on the oppressor. Exactly what I've said all along.

> I think your optimism is a bit premature.

Time will tell. When formerly silent conservatives start joining progressives and all are with one voice saying "we must fix this", it's a damn good sign.

> The dangerous neighborhood example is such a classic that it's easy to find. Items 5 and 9 on this list:

I think you understand why citing a list tangentially related statements with entirely different intent and basically no other information will not change my mind. If you don't, please re-read my previous comments.

> No it won't.

I have given a statement, which in my understanding is consistent with the modern understanding of radicalisation, that argues that it does. I'm in no way an expert but I would appreciate a better response than "No".

> What you are advocating for is tone policing. You are claiming that reasonable outrage is going to radicalize people and therefor people should not express anger when they have every right to be angry. "If she had calmed down, I wouldn't have hit her". Classic abuser and oppressor excuse.

This argument relies on the premise that I am a bad-faith actor. I am not. The abuser would have hit her regardless, I am actually interested in having a discussion. Also, you yourself state how hard it is to pinpoint appropriate outrage.

> People should listen to outrage and fix things before it's too late. That onus is on the oppressor. Exactly what I've said all along.

You fail to argue that this means that outrage is necessary in all forms of discussion and that an outrage-free environment is inherently oppressive. I'm not saying it's the end-all solution, but certainly seems like a better idea than an environment where any group or group of groups is the arbiter of appropriate outrage.

> I think you understand why citing a list tangentially related statements with entirely different intent

And yet you cited an article on divorce which had little to do with the topic. When I challenged that, you dug in harder and quoted much of the article. The article I had already read in its entirety. At which point I just stopped even discussing that point.

My list did not have different intent. It directly addressed your claim that "I genuinely do not understand how someone could possibly claim...". It's not only possible to claim. It's pretty common to claim. The article gave concrete examples of how what you were doing is exactly victim blaming with your neighborhood example. The neighborhood example is so common you can find it in multiple articles.

People who are oppressed are already victims. And you are blaming them for not being polite enough about their outrage. That the victims are the ones who are creating more racism by being outraged. It's their fault that they are radicalizing people. I'm not sure how you can blame a victim for making the problem worse and then say it's not victim blaming.

> which in my understanding is consistent with the modern understanding of radicalisation

You are the one who made the original claim that it radicalizes people so the burden of proof is on you. I did not just say no. I followed that with a persuasive argument. Which is the same as you have been doing: trying to persuade without evidence. At this point you should provide sources that anger about oppression is causing radicalization in others.

> This argument relies on the premise that I am a bad-faith actor.

People can in good faith be guilty of tone policing.

> The abuser would have hit her regardless,

Exactly! The radical would have become radicalized regardless. Well done!

> you yourself state how hard it is to pinpoint appropriate outrage.

Sure. That is the challenge. If we agree on that, then we agree that outrage in some cases is appropriate. I could end there because that pretty much summarizes my entire argument: outrage is sometimes appropriate.

> You fail to argue that this means that outrage is necessary in all forms of discussion

That's a strawman. I never claimed it's necessary in all forms of discussion, and I don't believe it is. There is a price you pay when you censor outrage. And you simply have to decide if what you get in return is worth that price.

> an outrage-free environment is inherently oppressive

It helps maintain the status-quo. If the status-quo oppresses people, then it is by definition oppressive to those people. In a society that had no racial injustice you wouldn't need to censor outrage about racial injustice. That outrage would be rare and seem weird when it happens.

> certainly seems like a better idea than an environment where any group or group of groups is the arbiter of appropriate outrage.

If you are not oppressed by society, an ivory tower like HN is pretty amazing. And I never suggested that any group should be an arbiter of appropriate outrage. What I said is that the challenge is a difficult one. I don't have answers around that. I can still point out that lacking such answers any forum that censors outrage is an ivory tower.

I think we're talking about too many nuanced issues now. The last few messages have been entirely "I said, you said" and we even have seemed to hit a reply limit. I'll admit that I have probably not considered your arguments clearly because of my previous biases. But I am also going to claim that you may have done the same. (If you don't that's fine, I am absolutely not trying to gaslight here.)

I'll try to address some final points.

> Thats's a strawman. I never claimed it's necessary in all forms of discussion, and I don't believe it is.

I went of your statement "I'm not sure how you have a civil discussion about inhumane acts that are supported by an oppressive system" in your original post. To me it implied that you think an entirely civil discussion of any form about certain issues is not desirable.

> And yet you cited an article on divorce which had little to do with the topic. When I challenged that, you dug in harder and quoted much of the article.

I simply wanted to give context to why I quoted the article. I did not want to imply that you had not read or understood the article. Sorry, bad call.

> You are the one who made the original claim that it radicalizes people so the burden of proof is on you.

I would cite the concepts of "Personal grievance" and "Group grievance" with regard to radicalization.

> People who are oppressed are already victims. And you are blaming them for not being polite enough about their outrage. That the victims are the ones who are creating more racism by being outraged. It's their fault that they are radicalizing people. I'm not sure how you can blame a victim for making the problem worse and then say it's not victim blaming.

Point taken. Again I do not want to put blame on these victims. I just want to point out that their behavior might have unintended consequences and an environment that allows them to express their grievances without possibly making things worse for themselves would be better. I realize that achieving such an environment might be an impossibly hard task - I accept that when done badly it could make things worse even for them - but I refuse to accept that trying to do so is to be dismissed as victim blaming.

EDIT: It seems the reply limit isn't actually a thing. It must have been a visual bug at my end.

Veiled insult aside, the point of a discussion forum is for discussion. If something is not conducive to discussion, it doesn't belong there.

It's not a veiled insult. It's just an accurate description of what HN is. Outrage can be conducive to discussion if you're willing to listen to what some people's lives are actually like. I've had many great discussions that start out with someone outraged. A great way to continue that discussion and get down to the interesting issues is "you sound really angry, tell me why". And then you have to be willing to listen. If you're not willing to listen to angry people about social issues, don't expect to contribute to improving social issues. It's fine that HN has chosen not deal with those things. But then HN should have no problem being called the ivory tower it is.