Just because it isn't against the rules, doesn't mean it's on-topic. Also, it's not the topic itself that makes me upset, it's the quality of discussion that usually follows. Most of the people lose their minds when they start to talk about politics. On HN this happens with social justice issues instead.
It's better to steer clear of political issues which are covered more than adequately elsewhere.
They are by their nature divisive and tend to make people upset and/or angry. This coarsens the atmosphere and makes reasoned and intelligent discussion far less feasible.
The fact that you could get your blood pressure to go up over a civil liberties issue that isn't even the topic of the thread is as good an illustration as I can think of for why we shouldn't have HN threads talking about political and social justice issues like this.
I think a distinction can be drawn between bringing up on HN the ability of an issue to become not just divisive but divisive along political lines, and the issue actually becoming divisive in society at large. Here we can discuss if it could be a political issue, what that would mean, what could be done about it, etc. That seems quite different that a discussion (on HN or elsewhere) wherein it has become a political issue.
Previous discussions about why not to discuss current issues in politics in HN have included the conclusions a) they are off topic and b) usually result in low quality discussion, sadly.
I definitely agree with that as well, maybe I'm being a little pedantic, but she or he did make the claim that all discussions are political. It just struck me the wrong way as someone who really enjoys non-political discussions (when I can find them).
I think you injected politics into something that is not the place for. Yes these issues are important but please understand that there are right times and settings for these discussions. To be honest, I was appalled at your comment and I completely understand Kovarex's reaction. He clearly did not word it tactfully, but I understand why he was upset.
What if I am not interested, at a meta level, in discussion on the social impact of the topic? (Note: Please appreciate the distinction between topic X in general, and discussion of topic X on board Y)
There are times and places to have political discussions - the fact that I do not engage with my mom on political topics over Thanksgiving turkey does not mean I am not interested in politics, it means I am not interested in politics in that particular context.
Mostly because I know that the discussion will end in anger, hurt feelings, and not a single changed mind. It has happened enough on this board that people, myself included, start getting very flag-happy when they get a whiff of partisanship in the air.
I especially do not appreciate the implication that not wanting to have the discussion "here" is a political statement of anything other than wanting to avoid a headache. I must point out that insisting that X be talked about when someone has expressed disinterest in the topic is hard to interpret in any way other than hostile disregard.
Yes, it is bothersome. You mentioned race issues, but you could have easily mentioned climate change: “is it really so unreasonable that people want to talk about keeping the planet hospitable?” Or abortion “is it really so unreasonable women want to talk about having control of their own bodies?” Or the war in Ukraine: “is it really so unreasonable people want to talk about their own political self determination?”
There will always be important political considerations that affect groups in disproportionate ways. That doesn’t mean we need to talk about politics all the time or that there is something wrong with not wanting to talk about politics. And yes, if someone expresses a desire to avoid political discussion, I think it’s a dick move to violate that desire and subtly imply they don’t care about race issues.
You are making a rational argument against an irrational and faceless adversary who wrote and continues to defend the guidelines which proscribe political discussion as being contemptuous.
It's simply not the proper venue because the policy admits so much distain and misunderstanding of politics that it can't effectively carve out a proper space for such discussion.
And further, the policy admits it cannot trust either participants or the voting system in place to manage such conversations. As soon as one person with power to flag, that's it.
These conversations inevitably make HN management nervous. Since they can't cope with it, no one else is allowed to.
The reason those subjects are largely not discussed here is because this is not the place for discussions such as those.
It's like going to a bird watching event and complaining that they don't respond when you try to argue political points. It's just not an appropriate discussion.
A good test to see if a topic make sense to discuss on HN is if people are willing to calmly discuss the merits of it.
The author says they are interested in the humanities and like to see articles focus on structural barriers faced by women in the workplace. I doubt however they want to see article discussing the merits of the topic, i.e. if women does face barriers in the work place. The result is that anyone who does not share the same perspective is not welcome in the discussion and the environment from that confrontation produce the opposite of thoughtful and substantive discussion.
Political discussion does not need to end like that and many topics which does not have the above property do pop up in HN.
Maybe the quality of the political discussion is so crappy because we don't talk about it?
My experience is that one has to express their emotional relationship to problems and be aware of it before they can actually insightfully engage with problems; if people don't, they just introduce their emotional biases into their problem solving and pretend they're not.
As others have pointed out, this isn't about COVID. That said, the notion that some topics cannot be discussed or cannot be discussed in a certain way is not only wrong, it is outrageous.
No, I'm saying that lack of discussion is a political position, and a community-wide ban, or even refusal to discuss it is yet another - in particular, one that silences everyone who is not okay with the social impact of the topic.
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