It made things worse and we ended the experiment after a couple days. I don't have links handy right now but may try to dig them up later*. It turns out that there's no faster way to politicize everything than to try something that simplistic. Wherever the optimum is for regulating the intense pressures HN is under, it's much less obvious than that.<p>It was a success in the sense that we learned a lot. If anyone wants to know about that, a lot of it is in the explanations here:<p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...</a><p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...</a><p>Some good threads to start with might be <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844</a> and <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490</a>.<p>These explanations have become pretty stable by now—stable enough that I repeat myself incessantly: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20politic&sort=byDate&type=comment" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...</a><p>*Edit: here's where we called it off: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251</a>
In 2019 my New Years Resolution was to avoid all news and social media. The reason I started the ban was because I found my mind unsettled after reading the news and I had trouble coming back to a tranquil headspace.<p>The inspiration is this simple quote: "The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control." (Epictetus)<p>I held this resolution for about 5 months and it was profoundly glorious. It's not hard. Treat current events like Game of Thrones spoilers. Focus on what you have control over. Be frank with others that you are taking a break from the news cycle. If your results are anything like mine you will find yourself calmer and able to concentrate on what matters. Your mind wont wander to externalities you don't have control over.<p>At the end of it, you can go read Wikipedia for 30 minutes and be just as caught up as anyone else because you know the end result of the news cycle instead of suffering through it as it happened.
Im not sure why citizens of representative democracies would want to inhibit political discussion. Presumably one of the benefits of living in such a regime is the ability to participate in policy formulation through voting, political campaigns and various forms of public service. As a result, would it not be reasonable to assume that most of these individuals are very knowledgeable about a variety of aspects of public policy? Therefore the majority of political discussion would be rigorous, fact based and consider a wide variety of points of view.<p>Analogously it would seem that citizens of dictatorship-based regimes don’t have to worry about these details (hopefully the dictator and their lieutenants have taken care of everything) and can focus on enjoying their lives.
(Edit): If we had the ability to tag posts, and then ignore categories like politics, this might help. While American politics is generally fascinating (whichever side you happen to end up on), everyone likely already has their own means to get this. Some find it divisive and exhausting.
I wrote a user script that compares each entry to a blacklist and removes the post from the page. Just by blacklisting the top 15-20 news sites I've been happier.
Seeing so much political topics, and especially bad news most of the time makes us feeling bad and pessimistic about many things that are objectively not so important.<p>A big part of the people working for influencial companies (GAFAM) are most certainly members of this community.<p>So this made me wonder: would it be possible that we have a collective responsibility or influence over those companies through those people? Would making the debates and trends here more interesting, sane and positive have a positive influence on those?<p>Edit: I just noticed that it was from 2016
For some people, politics isn't a choice, a luxury, an option to discuss or not, just because of the breadth and width of what politics means. T<p>Even then, there'd probably be a better time for a politics detox week than the current week, since it will be so impossibly difficult to not discuss the goings on. I mean, these are historic times (in the US, with international repercussions).
I think it's a bad thing to use "political" in this narrow sense. It cultivates the mindset that politics = party politics at the highest level of government. And then paints it as a bad place. Whereas actually people do political things all the time in their work and personal lives and even most of the decisions made by formal political system are made at the local government level in most western democracies.<p>Redefining a thing narrowly as its uncouth and hard-to-participate subset, and then blasting the thing (using its original wider definition) is a good way to drive people away from participating. Which is what we don't want.
I have been somewhat successful generally avoiding news. This has a benefit of taming a lot of the political backwash that everyone ends up gargling. And as many have mentioned - this doesn't equate to not caring, or being ignorant. Instead, I try trading the quick hit junk food, for material of better lasting value such as research articles, old books, historic writings, etc. (Don't get me wrong, I'm no stoic or saint. It's still easy to get dragged into some current affair. But I always feel stressed, and discouraged which encourages me to keep trying to avoid... ;)<p>The funny thing I have found is that there truly is 'nothing new under the Sun.' For instance, read through some of Frédéric Bastiat's stuff from the 1850s:
<a href="http://bastiat.org/" rel="nofollow">http://bastiat.org/</a><p>It could have been written this year.<p>Another goal of mine has been, if I get tangled in some current affair, to try and dig into what first principals are being addressed (or ignored) and reflect on my core beliefs in that area (rather than arguing the more surface issue that is being currently discussed). It's certain I don't have very much correct.<p>And lastly, and most obvious: avoid Teh socialz except where they build up value. Like, I might engage other illustrators through instagram - where we encourage each other, but completely avoid the fomenting and political bickering etc.
Well met. Just curious if one has approached this site from a usability perspective? For example, one formality in usability studies is that of personnas. The name "Hacker"suggests a preconcieved personna? Who is this hacker? My usability and marketing spidey senses tell me hacker embodies on one hand a elite group of programmers and on the other hand a lawless band of brigands? Have you ever conducted studies on how just the name Hacker alone gates this community? Who shies away from this place and who doesn't? I highly recommend courses by NNG for usability. The word hacker certainly has stigmas associated with it. The last study I read from NNG concluded that while many gains have been made in usabilty in the last decade, their findings were that IA, information architecture, lags significantly. IA is about word choices. If I saw an application menu with the word Hacker as a selection I would definitely flag that for review? Also I enjoy the site and Happy New Year!
I wanted to emphasize to people that there's a date attached to this post. I don't think they're currently considering having a political detox week. It seems there are a lot of comments that assume they are.
I have another question, is profit a motive for HN? It does not appear to be. Before HN there was slashdot.org, whicj is still around. Slashdot lost the thread I think because of revenue concerns and change of ownership. If this place is truly 100% a finacial loss then it does seem to validate yet again that news for profit is a bad idea because the news is soon compromised in the name of more viewership to drive ad revenue. If Reddit went 100% loss then I'm sure better moderation decisions would be available to them, likewise for Twitter and Facebook.
Why not ban it forever? Unless it's directly connected to tech it just makes this site more of the same and means one less place to escape toxic politics.
How about trying to encourage better political discussions rather than banning the whole topic?<p>We are in a very tense political landscape. Obviously people on HN need to talk it out. At least let's encourage healthy and proper conversations.<p>Maybe even have a specific "political discussion guidelines". The using downvotes to remove noise/unhealthy conversations we can have some proper arguments.
That seems like not a great mood when the nation (USA) is apparently under attack by domestic terrorists. I can understand if people are just being overly political, but it's hard to be political when a sizeable faction of the country evidently thinks it's time for the US experiment to get cancelled.
Just realized this was from 4 years ago. But it's an evergreen concept almost even more needed now. I do appreciate even the political perspectives on HN which feel more reasoned to me then elsewhere, but also can apprectiate the one week sabbatical from it here.
One of the main problems with banning political subjects on the site is that it favors the mainstream political ideas and disfavors the alternative political ideas.<p>This makes it essentially a political move on HN mods side, ie. not neutral at all, even though it "bans everything equally".<p>Mainstream political ideas disseminate through all other sorts of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or even cable news. Whilst alternative ideas do not. (Arguably not even on Reddit anymore)<p>Whilst you can certainly make the argument that what we post here doesn't matter because there isn't a million users on Facebook that it might reach, I think reaching the correct people, even if only less than a hundred, is worthwhile and arguably more impactful.<p>Now, with the way the world is moving forward right now, with Twitter and Parler, it turns out that allowing political subjects to be debated isn't exactly a neutral stance either. That it is essentially a stance that is "for" the alternatives, at least according to some powerful people in control.<p>Which puts the HN mods team in a damned if you do damned if you don't kind of seat.<p>I think in a more healthy world a site like this could and should stay on topic, avoiding political subjects outside the occasional coding-language or distro flamewars. ;)<p>But since the world is arguably terminally ill right now, HN should continue on it's current trajectory and "keep siding with the alternative political ideas", and allowing politics to be discussed.<p>I don't want to come off as accusing them of actually siding with any side however, I'm just stating that in the current climate, they come off that way whether they like it or not. In my personal opinion, a forum that allows moderated political debate is truly neutral, period. But my personal opinion doesn't set the tone for the political climate just yet.
Why is this coming up? Is it due to the five or so posts a day regarding the recent censorship? It's been pretty repetitive but I think it's definitely relevant to pretty much everyone here. While maybe it hasn't been the absolute highest quality debate, I don't think it's been at all nasty. I've found it quite interesting and I'm still thinking about it.
It's quite funny how badly some of those comments on the previous post have aged:<p>"We have a golden period of forty-some days before a new administration comes to power that has shown every intent of using that information to deport people and create a national Muslim registry."<p>Lol, no.
I have heard people shouted down with "No politics!" for mentioning a vaccine.<p>FOSS is politics. DNS is politics. Stray dogs is politics. The weather is politics. Banning political discussion is politics. Any disagreement or difference of opinion is politics.<p>Politics is inescapable.
Quoting myself from that thread in 2016[1]:<p>> This sounds like a cop out and I question whether this post would have been made had Trump lost and Clinton won.<p>Per comments from dang it looks like the reason is “<i>it didn’t work</i>”. Still funny how it turned out to be true.<p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108741" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108741</a>
My question is this:<p>Can you ban discussing politics on a website largely about Technology (and heavy on the Silicon Valley/IT side of things) when one of the largest stories in the world at the moment is the interaction of the internet (read Twitter) and politics (read Trump) and how these things influence one another and lead to real world consequences (read January 6th)? Now, arguably more so than back in 2016, technology is playing an ever larger role in how we interact with one another. I fail to see how not acknowledging and discussing that is going to help anything.<p>In short, good luck sticking your head in the sand. If you ignore it, things won't get better. And you're free to not read any of links or the comments at any time.