Here's what usually happens at this point in a politically-charged HN thread: I ask a question along the lines of, "Why are you so interested in defending an indefensible aspect of an indefensible war on an abstract noun?", and then I get a nasty note from the admins warning against personal attacks, even though none was intended.
So we'll need to agree to disagree on this one. I suspect we're coming from two very different places.
It isn't just a question of the word, but of using it as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological argument. That leads to flamewars so when we see people doing it we ask them not to.
It's also not ok to use HN primarily for political or ideological battle, since that isn't the purpose of the site. Obviously some topics are more political and commenting in such threads is fine, but it's not to use an account primarily for it.
You're both right. There are such posts, yet HN is not a political site. The balance/tension there is delicate and important.
The problem with your comment upthread is that it was uncivil because it took the thread into political battle. We all know how difficult if not intractable that particular battle is, and how dreadfully easy to reduce everything to it. The pull of that black hole, strong as it may be, needs to be resisted if we're to have the civil, substantive discussion we're hoping for on HN.
Please assume good faith when commenting here. (We're going to add that to the site guidelines btw.)
It’s an antagonistic turn of phrase that’s not conducive to an atmosphere of high quality discussion. There are other places on the internet that are for that, not HN.
Dang, while perhaps the poster could have crafted their comment more carefully, I'm having a hard time understanding the line you are drawing. It seems a bit arbitrary.
I very much appreciate all the hard work you do here, btw. HN is my favorite place to discuss things online. I also understand the difficulty of not letting the place get overrun with unproductive political debates. I just think we have to be careful to not unreasonably single out certain topics in a way that may seem confusing or arbitrary.
If it was solely the unnecessary snark and lack of good faith, then I think I understand. But by referring specific content in the comment, it becomes less clear.
I don't really know why you chose to make these distinction as a response to what I wrote.
You said HN is not an appropriate place for this kind of discussion. That's all I was disagreeing with. I would agree that an arbitrary discussion of US politics would be out of place, but on this occasion it is directly relevant to this community.
I completely understand why you brought it up, I'm just trying to explain that you were and are still assuming bad faith.
From my perspective, this is not very odd because HN is not a general purpose message board. The guidelines have always outlined what is on and off topic, and politics has always been considered off topic. It seems like a very reasonable experiment.
No, it's a symptom of HN not being a place for ideological battle. Users flag such posts, presumably for that reason.
If you want a site dedicated to this sort of disputation, there are other places to find that, and room for new forums as well.
There's a class of users who only want to fight these same fights over and over again, they're a minority, they're not using HN in its intended spirit, and they shouldn't have the ability to fundamentally alter it for the users who do.
I appreciate the polite response very much. The issue isn't this discussion or any one discussion, it's the pattern of using HN primarily for political arguments. The test here is
that word 'primarily'. This is the only way we've found to draw a line that fairly balances the concerns: that on the one hand many on-topic stories have political aspects, but on the other hand political flamewars will burn everything up if you let them... so we can't let them.
I don't mean to exclude you from such discussions! But it's important not to have accounts that are used only for that. The value of HN is intellectual curiosity. Every account should clearly be using the site for that purpose, and some purposes—like political battle, or promotional marketing—go against it.
The other thing is just that it's necessary to follow the guidelines even more scrupulously as a topic becomes more divisive. Things like "Assume good faith" are our lines of defense against the forum destroying itself.
It's far more likely people who dislike name-calling and poor quality confrontational comments flagged the threads.
Everything about HN's karma and moderation is designed to encourage high quality discourse and discourage conflict. That approach attracts readers who are drawn to high quality discourse and who dislike the trash-talking low-grade conflict found on other sites.
None of this implies anyone thinks it's "bad" to disagree, it only implies that HN isn't the place for combat, because it's intentionally designed to be a place for conversation. The two are different and encourage and lead to different behaviors on the part of the participants. Every other online forum ends up being a forum for conflict. HN is unique in being a forum for discussion.
The issue, in this case, isn't opinions nor the other discourse in the thread. Rather, it is the account's comments over a long stretch of time.
The question "has an account been using HN primarily for political or ideological battle?" is one of the most important criteria we use in HN moderation. When it is the case, we ask an account to stop and/or end up banning it.
This rule has many advantages. One is that it's more or less independent of the specific views a user is arguing for or against. Another is that it allows for a certain amount of political and ideological discussion (as long as it doesn't break the site guidelines in other ways, of course: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Grandiose politicized provocations are flamebait. There's no actual information there. Your comment does contain some, and I wouldn't have replied to it that way.
Sensationalized political fights are one of the worst poisons here, so when an account is showing signs of using HN for that, it's not good. Substantive discussion of divisive questions (which your comment is more touching into) is a quite different thing, and much more likely to be ok.
It doesn't feel like you're asking a question so much as seeking an argument, but let me try to explain. It's the combination of shallowness, snark, and politics. That's a ticket to flamewar hell, and we need users not to go there if HN is to remain viable for anything other than flamewars.
Sorry about the broken link. It's fixed now, so if you'd (re-)read the site guidelines and follow them when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.
Your comments on this aren't really a good fit for HN. For one thing, they get uncivil pretty quickly when arguing—that's bad. More generally, accounts that comment to push some agenda, even a purely intellectual one, are not a good fit for HN. We're looking for thoughtful conversation here, not idées fixes.
You edited your original response. I was going to reply and say that HN is not a place that is safe to have an opinion that dissents from the hive mind. Unless you follow neatly along, be prepared for the blowback. ¯\_(?)_/¯
Overtly political discussions do pop up on HN occasionally - the ones that don't descend into slanging matches (such as this one) are usually of good quality and seem to be tolerated by the mods.
submissions may be problematic, the response may be as well.
HN doesnt like to be a gladitorium or a platform for ideologies. it carries much more wieght to discuss the facts rather than how ones perception of the facts elicits visceral response.
its not about you having done something its about other users and the optics, you may notice those have been moderated as well
I don't have a political tribe, I'm not a partisan, etc. I was hoping HN would be the one place on the Internet where we could discuss things maturely. Notably, I'm not attacking left-wing people or viewpoints here, but observing that there are two goals that are in apparent conflict (which isn't to say they contradict each other or that they're ignoble or anything else).
So we'll need to agree to disagree on this one. I suspect we're coming from two very different places.
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