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HN mods, can we please reinstate the “no politics” rule?

14 points by seertaak ↗ HN
Dear mods: can we reinstate the no politics rule, please? I know I could just ignore threads with political content, but for some idiotic reason I can't seem to help myself from peering into and contributing to these pointless debates where everyone essentially preaches to the choir and comes out feeling frustrated and angry at the other side's stupidity/ignorance/dishonesty/corruption.

So I propose we, as a community, all agree to talk -- and argue! -- about the stuff which we all genuinely love. We love tech. We love programming languages. We love hardware. We love philosophy, as long as it's not too political. We love physics, and science more generally. We love music theory. Our interests are deep and diverse.

We are hackers -- not politicos! I say let's rally around that, and prove to the wider world that in at least one online community, we can step above the puerile name calling. The hacker community has attained a certain status, through our immense collective success. The world now watches what we do. Let's not blow it.

So let's practice some self-restraint. You, the mods, are the guardians of this community, and to date you've done a damn fine job. Be brave, and nip these corrosive political threads in the bud.

12 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 38.8 ms ] thread
ocdtrekkie
I think the largest issue that tended to get in the way of this (because technically the rules still indicate politics is "off-topic") is the challenge of deciding where tech stops and politics begins, when topics like net neutrality and trade laws with copyright effects get involved. Or the difference between talk about solar startups and climate change deniers.

I personally don't think it's too hard to allow those grey areas a bit, but push away from political topics that don't have tech implications at all, but I think the moderators may have disagreed.

I did truly enjoy the political detox week. I'd like to see it back on occasion maybe. Especially right after elections.

savethefuture
I agree, the political detox week was fantastic. We went from a flood of political toxicity to a normal stream of tech/hacker related content again, revealing the stress of politics. I do not come to this website to read about what Trump said on twitter, or what Hillary had lied about. I come here to read about latest tech trends and "Hacker News", and that should be enforced to keep people like me returning.
itg
It's easy to avoid the threads. More annoying is the passive-aggressive political comments on a story that has nothing to do with politics.
andrewclunn
One of the things I appreciate about this community is that occasionally a well informed post with links to relevant information will crop up, even in political topics. Just don't read them. If they're nothing more than click-bait intending to insight a flame war, then they tend to get flagged anyways. About the only bad thing is when a link seems to get upvoted based on title alone (by people who clearly haven't read it), but that's not isolated to political topics and articles.
MrZongle2
I prefer a politics-lite HN but as was discussed during the previous experiment, it's sometimes difficult to draw a line between what is political and what is not. I think the mods would be in a no-win situation were the moratorium repeated.

However, perhaps there's another solution.

If a "flag as political" capability were added to HN, along with the ability for users to show/hide political-flagged threads, it seems to me that users and the community as a whole could do most of the heavy lifting.

I realize that this raises the possibility for other flags (e.g. "can we have one just for X, so we don't have to see Y?") and with every supposedly simple modification there can be a legion of convoluted behind-the-scenes changes required; I hope I don't seem to be implying that such a change would be trivial. But perhaps in the interest of keeping the mods' workload down and discussions a tad more civil during what may be a particularly contentious next four years, it should be seriously considered.

neximo64
The main issue is also most people align to one side and it alienates the others.
seertaak
> it's sometimes difficult to draw a line between what is political and what is not

Fine, err on the side of caution. The thread that prompted my request had the word "Trump" in the title -- it's pretty clear which way that one's going to go.

savethefuture
Off topic articles should be treated as Off topic articles, and removed. There should not be any need to update any system or change anything, just enforce the rules. This website is called Hacker News for a reason. Not Political News.
MrZongle2
An intersection of the political and the technical is not that unusual: PE Trump's meeting with industry leaders back in December is one such example. Likewise, the ongoing Manning & Snowden sagas tread ground in both territories. These are subjects that don't necessarily qualify as "off topic", but aren't as solidly technical as, say, announcement of a new Rust release or a disclosed software vulnerability.
savethefuture
Like everything else, not everything will be perfect and mistakes will happen. Fine line articles are of course a grey area for the "off topic" rule but at least give us some semblance of maintaining the rules. For example, the few weeks before the election were total chaos, we should strive to not reach that point of political take over again.
mindcrime
I couldn't agree more. The no-politics period was a breath of fresh air.
kup0
I can see it from both sides.

On one hand, it's nice to have a place where politics is less-commonly discussed and where the focus can be on tech.

On the other hand, some of the most in-depth, interesting comments I've seen on political situations and views, I've seen on HN, comments that have made me seriously think. When HNers remain civil and just have thorough discussion on a political topic, I enjoy it. The problem is not letting it turn into a flamewar, and politics is one of those subjects that attracts emotional responses.

Then, finally, is the difficulty in determining what constitutes "politics", as politics intersects with technology all the time.

HN mods will draw the line, and then all we'll do is argue about where the line should be. Problem will not be solved, just moved.