Hacker News has never been an anything-goes site. Tight moderation, considerate rules, and low tolerance for bullshit have made this a great site to talk about interesting technical topics and ideas. Remember that we all abide by the rules of the site, and that this isn't a magic free speech zone. If you want to talk political topics, the Internet has more than enough outlets.

Political discourse is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion. This is not an opinion; look only to sites that allow political discourse (Slashdot?), or even our own comments to see how quickly rational discussion can devolve into flaming. One of the major selling points when I introduce HN to other people is the _absence_ of political topics or discussion: leaving the politics out just produces better technical content.

Also, please consider the idea that politics are regional and differ between countries. In Canada, where I'm from, many of the US political topics would never come up; many European countries might feel even more strongly. As a Canadian, I find American political musings and arguments even less relevant and noisy. By contrast, technological topics are always interesting to me - I can appreciate these, and I love that there's this corner of the Internet where I can participate in a reasoned, interesting technical community. Please don't ruin it with politics, especially the polarizing American variant.

I appreciate that the site is willing to take this step, and I sincerely hope it can keep this site useful, interesting and level-headed for the future.

In fact, what is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion is: emotionally charged, poorly-considered, and dishonest discussion. The topic doesn't matter: health fads, operating systems, or taxes. I agree, many people have terrible style in their approach to political discussion - but see also, e.g. Hobbes and Rousseau for more thoughtful representatives.

Technically true. But practically speaking, I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. If that's true, then this moderation should boost the general quality of HN comments and topics, which is why most of us come here in the first place. As a comparison, I was initially annoyed that simple jokes / witty remarks that were void of other content were down voted on HN. But long-term I compare it to reddit and agree with the method: I can still go to reddit if I want wit (I often do). I (ideally) come here for high quality technical content.

This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or functional programming enough to have an opinion.

Part of the beauty of HN is getting opinions about things that matter in the real world, from people who really think about things.

This is true, but I suspect the biggest reason is that politics is more prone to Crony Beliefs ( http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ ) than almost any other field of discussion.

There's a severe danger that you would lose. For a commentary on emotionally charged and intellectually devoid arguments about a technical subject, I give you http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8488235).

But that's not the whole of it, by a long chalk. There have been "the OS Wars", "the editor wars", "the archiver wars", and others. One particularly extreme example that I personally encountered was a group of people in comp.os.os2.advocacy . They did all of the petty and stupid Usenet tricks such as rudely and impatiently splitting paragraphs and sentences to reply to all of the individual words. Much of the level of "argument" was the sort of thing that I'd expect from six-year-olds in a playground: parroting, insults, and general childishness.

I didn't read the newsgroup for the better part of a decade. When I went back to look at it I was astounded to see that the group was still at it, in (as far as I could tell) the same threads with exactly the same content-free taunting and rubbish.

Going back to that newsgroup again today, and picking stuff at random, here's an example of this sort of discourse. From 2011!

* https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy...

Here's a comparison thread randomly selected from the 1990s.

* https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy...

I come to Hacker News not only for the submissions but more so for the discussion. I find as of late discussions populated with meaningless content. It seems people feel a need to communicate what they are thinking regardless of the comments usefulness.

I fall prey to this too. If my comments are short I do try to make sure they are helpful in some way. I will try to keep them on-topic and not filled with worthless opinion.

Yep. I feel like my first mistake on this site was to argue with every comment I disagreed with. Unless the comment leads to an instructive discussion, it's OK to just downvote it.

For a site that is ostensibly focused on intellectual curiosity, this is antithetical to that goal. A robust, informed discussion requires exposure to a variety of perspectives, especially ones that seem challenging or uncomfortable.

If you do not agree with a comment--so what? Either refute it or move on. Just because you are unable or unwilling to refute it does not mean that someone else will not come along after you and do so. Downvoting should be reserved for comments which are truly useless, not comments that you merely disagree with.

And, yes, I am aware that downvoting for disagreement has been promoted and accepted by some on HN, but it's wrong--at least, it is if your actual goal is to have robust, informed discussion of intellectually interesting topics.

(Wallis was a political adversary of Hobbes, in case that's not clear)

It would be interesting to know how they will judge the results of this experiment when it concludes.

I respectfully disagree that discussion of politics on HN cannot "meaningfully change or move forward the debate and is unlikely to be instructive". Indeed, I have witnessed proof that this is not so. I have seen numerous occurrences in comment threads where there has been spirited factual debate which ended up informing both sides. I have seen minds changed. I have experienced my own mind being changed.

I don't deny, of course, that there has been some...less useful discussion, as well. But I feel that overall, it has been positive.

I say this as someone whose been that spectator.

I feel like healthy political discussion would be a meaningful change. If thoughtful people all abstain from the topic, it will surely get worse. The immediate goal isn't to "win" arguments. It's not to be confused about why someone would disagree. Or even agree! Maybe they do but there's no place to say that.

From a British perspective, I find most of the political discussion on HN to be useful, although perhaps I just instinctively avoid some topics. There are a lot of global issues which are being discussed, whether that's climate change, transport, tech and data regulation, job automation, money in politics, licensing and intellectual property, electronic surveillance, global trade, etc.

These are all issues which are relevant to the technology community, as big social issues which are targets for innovation, as moral issues which we have to grapple with, or as concrete barriers which directly impinge on us. I'd say having a space for the technology community to discuss these things is a source of a fair amount of the value of this discussion board.

Having said that, political discussion does have to be subsidiary to technology discussion. Once political discussion gets over a certain level, you're just appealing to a general audience and the forum loses its distinctiveness.

So I sympathize with the moderators. You always have to draw a line in the sand, unfortunately attempting a total ban is going to be just as subjective as what goes on at the moment, which is moderators removing or flagging thread-by-thread (presumably to avoid general topics dominating, or to kill off those particular comment threads which have become toxic). I suggest they just keep on muddling through, and we just acknowledge the process is necessary but messy, and cut them some slack.

HN doesn't add much to politics (it looks just like that kind of discussion would look anywhere else) but politics does detract from HN (firstly because you get less of what HN has that is less prevalent elsewhere, and secondly because politics is great at distracting attention from everything else.)

This would not be a controversial statement if "politics" were replaced with "pornography" and I think the two are, in this context, very much a like - you can have none, or you can have just that one thing as they do in many places and that too "works" in its own way, but having a little works badly.

(And if anything, if HN had porn it'd be easier to ignore it than politics because with politics, not only do you need to avoid the temptation to read about it but also to argue with the harebrained viewpoint in the comments that threatens your family, country and the entire humanity, and then they have to avoid the temptation to push back against my harebrained arguments threatening their family, country and the entire humanity. And just standing there and doing nothing when humanity is at risk, for the sake of a goal so narrow and insignificant as keeping HN about one thing and not another, is very, very hard.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(While you're here I'll remind you about turning off flagging on some overly-politicised stories that were being flagkilled earlier this year - if you're worried about HN becoming overly political then that sent the opposite message)

In the longer run, I think it is good to have some politics on the site. Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum and has a huge amount of intersection with politics. In the past, it has been possible to have rational and nuanced conversations about political issues on HN.

In the recent election cycle, that's been destroyed. It seems to have emboldened people to derail threads with political mud-slinging and the crazies have come out of the woodwork.

To put it simply, I never thought HN would be the place where I was first told to leave the country or get killed. The fact that it was (and not Reddit) honestly depresses me, and I hope that a detox period will force the worst politics out of the forum.

----------

That being said, I see a lot of people pointing to "incivility" as a problem in political threads. That is incredibly wrong. The problem in political threads is twofold: (a) people civilly arguing without actually acknowledging each other's points at all, (b) hateful rhetoric which destroys a sense of community.

If you want evidence of how civility is not the problem, take a look at this thread where a long-time commenter (with >12k karma) civilly, calmly proposed the mass deportation and/or murder of Jews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816

I think you're right that both of those are problems, but they're not the only problem. Incivility is also a problem in political discussions here lately. Another problem lately is that discussions to which a political discussion is only tangentially relevant get derailed by political discussions that exhibit these problems.

> If you want evidence of how civility is not the problem, take a look at this thread where a long-time commenter (with >12k karma) civilly, calmly proposed the mass deportation and/or murder of Jews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816

I disagree with this for two reasons. Firstly, if people could civilly propose the mass deportation and/or murder of Jews, then that wouldn't show that people proposing either that or innocuous things incivilly is not a problem (only that incivility is not the only problem). But here specifically, I don't think that commenter spoke civilly, any more than "No offense, but <some insulting or offensive thing>" is polite (indeed, less so, as the commenter made even less pretense). The civility of discourse isn't independent of the content of that discourse.

This statement should probably become a part of civility rules in most communities.

Rapoport's Rules:

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

- You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.

- You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

- You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

- Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

[0]: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...

[1]: http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html

Nonetheless, both of them make object-level claims about exactly the same sorts of stuff: which way the markets will go, public policy, etc.

We need a clear, courteous way to talk about situations in which more than one person is trying to predict or prescribe the same object-level thing, but each person in the conversation is bringing completely different paradigms, assumptions, and prior knowledge to the table.

Or to cut to the example that made dang put in the moratorium, an everyday person and a white nationalist are living in extremely different worldviews with extremely different paradigms. This would also be the case where I want content to count for civility: if one side of the conversation is trying to make a courteous, civil, well-written case that the other side should cease to exist, then the line of incivility is crossed, period. There's just not going to be any way for a non-white-nationalist to restate the white-nationalist (ie: neo-Nazi) worldview eloquently, give credit to neo-Nazis where credit is due, and then deconstruct that worldview.

Maybe, in an ideal society, we would expect every citizen to be able to eloquently refute every bad idea. However, in our existing society, our heuristic is to require that citizens only put in the effort to politely discuss or debate content that does not incite or entail violence. When it comes to violence, our heuristic as a society is to protect people first, and ask for justification only much later if at all. We assume that somewhere a philosophy professor, a priest, or a public official can retrieve the arguments against mass violence.

And nowadays, I'm worrying that with the living memory of such violence dying, people are starting to slip into forgetting that there are very good reasons we don't ask for counterarguments against violence.

That actually could be a good way to moderate political threads by requiring an even higher standard of conduct. So you must not merely be civil, but actively apply Rapoport's Rules.

I can imagine pushback along the lines of enforcing speech rules, which I'm somewhat sympathetic to. That said, I think keeping them in mind is worth it.

That's why I suggest this higher standard for only political threads. It's a lot better than banning them entirely.

I understand it's a little contentious to remove an entire topic of discussion, but I also welcome this and if the experiment goes well I would like to see it go longer term. I'm guilty of engaging in political discussions on HN but I try to moderate my words, but I know there are many who don't moderate their words in part or at all and especially because of how polarized politics seems at the moment (in the US at least) it's maybe a smarter decision to not allow people the opportunity to not moderate their words.

One benefit of this community is that technical discussion is exclusive. Not everyone is ready to understand why a relational database might be better than a key value store. This hopefully results in discussion that is based on experience earned expertise.

Politics has virtually no barrier to entry. Consequently, the comment quality declines.

Not terribly different from discussions of MongoDB, is it?

The only people who care about flaming are the flamed. They should be able to take a good argument, and besides the flamers get modded down. Slashdot is a great example that HN would well to emulate in my opinion. It is in no way an echo chamber.

This is obviously false. For example, plenty of democracies have flourished despite having libraries where silence is golden.

> One could argue, that when you live in a democracy, politics are a necessary duty for every citizen.

HN is international and if I recall correctly, more than half of users are not from the USA. Some users don't live in a democracy and some don't believe in it.

There is a difference between "not allowed to speak" and "not allowed to speak about politics". You can't speak under water, but a pond isn't the proof that democracy can't exist.

> Some users don't live in a democracy and some don't believe in it.

I look forward to arguing with monarchists about their views at some point in the future, then.

1 I only refer to myself as part of the unwashed masses because: A) I am not actually a programmer B) I am incredibly poor and C) I literally do not bathe frequently due to said extreme poverty as I am homeless. ;-)

2 Evidence of total support: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108692

We need to be talking about the political implications of what we've built, and figuring out how to fix our mess. This is like the period before the hurricane: everyone should be busy boarding up windows, and you can't do that if you decide you're just not going to talk about the coming storm because it makes you feel bad.

Silence assists certain forms of repression.

I was pretty let down that HN did not do more to protect political discussions during the US election cycle and I really didn't see all that much vitriolic behavior in the first place. Even if there is bad behavior though, is that something that we need to be protected from at all times? Maybe it is better to let it happen, point it out when we see it, and then hopefully learn to discuss more civilly as a community in the future.

I also think that specific flags would help, i.e. flag a comment that is against some guideline, with reference to the rule it broke.

One of the worst fallacies, us probably the kind that removed the civility from a discussion, and hence the good faith.

As a side note, the worst kinds of guideline is an ambiguous one, that leaves a lot to interpretation, e.g "act civil" is itself a nice rule, but otherwise useless, better off as a heading above specific clarifications.

HN doesn't need to be Wikipedia wrt comment rules, but a few Wikipedia style rules might be good.

There is a setting in your options called "showdead". Is that on or off for you? If it's set to off HN will hide some comments that have been killed by userflags. Thus, you may well have not seen the worst examples.

But this week someone (with more than 10k karma and an account that's over 3000 days old) called for Jews to relocate:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816

> But, yes, to the extent the inchoate Alt Right has a position on it, one of them is that Jews are to be "excluded if not eliminated from society", as in all societies that are not Israel. You've got your own homeland now, which we of the Alt West fully support, relocate yourself there. Specifically "diversity + proximity = war", and we want to avoid "war" such as it is or will be.

This is a new account of mine but I have accounts going back many years. I usually flip [showdead] to 'yes' as soon as I get reminded by seeing a [flagged] comment.

> But this week someone (with more than 10k karma and an account that's over 3000 days old) called for Jews to relocate

I don't like that comment either at all, but I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad to know that someone who is solidly part of our community thinks that way and that someone who's probably very smart otherwise can simultaneously hold an opinion like that.

If we just ban that person or even worse disallow a wide swath of conversation topics, what good does it do? hga will still believe that (and he mostly expressed himself civilly, I guess). Are you worried that his ideas will spread? This may be where our mindset differs, but I believe the best and only course of action is for people like you and me respond civilly and with reason, and to prove why hga is misguided.

Sorry, but I don't think hga is merely "misguided."

He believes I should be forcibly deported to Israel and, if I refuse, should be killed. This isn't a belief that you argue with people about. We fought a world war against this belief.

You don't deal with neonazis by arguing with them. Whether Jews are equal humans or not should not be open to debate. You deal with neonazis by ignoring and/or banning them.

As much as I hate the doctrine of safe spaces, there's also the fact that I believe I should be able to come on Hacker News and expect to not have people calling for me to be murdered. Sorry if that's too much to ask.

Another issue: when do some topics go beyond the pale and must not be tolerated? Is there such a point?

Perhaps these are off-topic for this thread, but they've been on my mind as part of the larger issues "detox week" is intended to address.

Probably to just stop replying to them. Sum up your thoughts and respectfully let them know that you've made your point as well as you can, and that this will be your last response. Or, the site could have a feature to block certain users for a period of time so that you just don't have to see it.

> Another issue: when do some topics go beyond the pale and must not be tolerated? Is there such a point?

Not for me, though I know I have a radical view on what should be the limits (or lack thereof) of freedom of speech. In reality though, there are certain types of speech that are illegal and so I understand that moderators will do what they have to in those situations.

I've also been thinking about these things. I am making a real-time reddit clone for fun and I am trying to strike upon a system that keeps discussion civil and substantive with as little need as possible for moderation. Not saying that every place on the internet should be a haven for freedom of speech though, and I really appreciate what dang and the other mods do here. By and large, I have few complaints about how HN is run and they've come up with many good ideas for algorithmically cooling down the flame wars (e.g. not allowing immediate replies when discussion gets heated).

I look forward to the Show HN for your project! :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file

The problem isn't topics. The problem is posters. If it was even tangentially related to tech (a new start-up community in a ghetto?), someone could post a well thought out and reasoned statement arguing against ethnic diversity. I would be amazed if they did, but anything is possible. Just like people can post incredibly shortsighted and emotional crap about what text editor to use.

So rather than make a blanket (and half-assed, at that) statement on a topic being banned (will be interesting to see what gets removed and what/who YC are financing or partnering with in the near future...), remove the negative posts while leaving the good.

"Can we stop with the politics" doesn't take away your right to protest or discuss politics _elsewhere_. It just means someone is tired hearing the same arguments rehashed over and over on HN.

I'm tired of people not getting it the first time

There are tons of political forums where ppl can express their opinions and discuss them.

It just does not have to be here.

In fact, sub-reddit provides all the specialization you could need; I think "demographic" is usually what is valued in HN.

So does sleep. Stop sleeping.

EDIT: Hours not spent fighting fascism are hours spent supporting it, right?

It expresses, succinctly, the problem with 'either you are with me or against me', and its evily-more-persuasive cousin 'there is no apolitical speech'.

Sometimes I wish I was more apolitical, for my own sake, and if this defends the status-quo, so be it. What was the chance of making any difference anyway?

From what I have seen I don't think HN in its current form is the right forum for those discussions. Even scanning this sub-thread prompted by your comment I'm already starting to see that the discussion seems to be devolving. Here is a group of technologists that could in theory spin up another forum with moderation tools and integration with HN to have back and forth between the two forums based on what "flavor" (political or technical) the discussion was going in and all I see is second-guessing and critiquing with no actionable and constructive items in the mix.

I don't know about 'actionable items', but political conversation isn't any different than other conversations -- civility, the assumption of good faith, and an open mind are more common factors as to whether a discussion is good or bad versus topic.

The problem with political discussion isn't that it's political, it's that America (and possibly elsewhere that I can't speak to) has decided that "my side is good, the other side is bad". This leads to conversations that assume bad faith, and are close-minded, which makes those discussions "bad". You can't fix that with a set of rules, but you can enforce the same rules around those discussions -- people being rude, snarky or dismissive would be subject to censure, while people who are being courteous, informative and civil would not.

In short, I maintain that the problem with political discussions versus other discussions is that we treat them as different than other discussions. At their best, they can be a productive means of informing others to facts they may not have been aware, or elevating one's opinion from a basic understanding to a more nuanced understanding. But the more special we treat politics, the more the regular rules suffer, and blanket policies banning politics foster this special status in which vitriol becomes normalized, regimented and de rigueur.

So long as incivility is normal, the greater our partisan divides will grow.

You discuss it the same way you discuss any other idea in good faith:

by evaluating the content on its message, not on the presuppositions you might have for its messenger;

by evaluating each topic in isolation on its own, and trying to determine whether or not any individual point has merit or not, how much merit it may have, and where it does not have merit, explaining why you consider it meritless;

by being open-minded enough to not dismiss individual points because you disagree with the central thesis;

by putting forth your best arguments, and letting the stronger argument win the day, unblemished by vitriol;

by being civil and courteous to your fellow man because as humans, they're deserving of at least a civil, open minded discussion.

For example, let's look at Google's Trusted Contacts. For obvious reasons, a lot of HN are very opposed to it. One topic that was brought up was the Google Buzz disaster and how google pre-built the community based on who we had emailed and talked to. Which was very dangerous for people who had an abusive ex.

If that were to launch today (and something similar will...), white nationalism becomes a huge problem. All of those bloggers and twitter folk who decide to NOT shove their head in the sand and actually engage and speak up are suddenly going to have their other contacts exposed. The people who have friends who speak against Breitbart are now directly exposed.

And that is a pretty big tech AND social issue. And to ignore the problem with a large movement of people who tend to be more armed than their political spectrum counterparts and who have a long history of getting their way through abuse is horrifically negligent.

And considering that white nationalist parties/candidates are gaining political office in many western nations, it becomes even more of an issue. Can we discuss political legislature that seems to specifically target tech geared toward helping inner city youths (who tend to be black)? What about a marked tendency for facial recognition and profiling software that applies a color wheel to determine threats to gain funding?

All of that is political, all of that is very heavily influenced by understanding that it is white nationalist parties pushing it, and all of that MUST be discussed.

> friends who speak against Breitbart

> people who tend to be more armed

> a long history of getting their way through abuse

> white nationalist parties/candidates

Are you talking about white nationalists, or actually about conservatives/Trump/Breitbart, tarring them as violent and abusive along the way?

Which is kind of why I think this entire "detox", much like just about every detox that is about getting rid of the antioxidants or whatever the hell people go to spas for, is a load of bull. The problem isn't the topic, it is how people discuss it. And people discuss plenty of topics in overly emotional and pedantic ways. Often times while extolling their own intelligence in a way that makes you REALLY glad they aren't in the same room as you (HN may be even worse than reddit on that last point).

Respond to posts that can have a discussion. Ignore the ones that can't.

Of course. Yet there are obvious correlations to certain topics, and there might be a connection between the "how people discuss it" and the capacity to take a week off from it once in a while.

Also, are you really taking the correlation route in the pseudo-intellectual argument for why there is a ban?

Because if we are just going by correlation: Any time security or privacy is a topic, people stop reading anything and just start speaking from The Heart (just look at the Google Trusted Contacts thread where a significant chunk of the posters have no idea what the app even is...). So clearly that topic should be banned too, right? I mean, there is a clear and obvious correlation between topics about security and privacy and people having emotional discussions. So ban it

In all seriousness: It is your product and you do with it as you see fit. Just understand that people used to love Google and Facebook until they decided (rightly or wrongly) that they were just a commodity and that they were giving their personal information and opinions to an entity that had no problems doing experiments to figure out how to better target them. And with crap like this, it won't take long for people to realize that the company built around knowing what tech to invest in may have an ulterior motive for hosting a board for Cutting Edge Tech (TM) and may be using the data for less than kosher reasons. And crap like this is a good way to trigger a burst of thought from people.

Would you expand on this? What ulterior motives do you have in mind? What do you think HN is using the data for? Most of the data is available through the API, so pretty much anyone can use the data for whatever purpose they'd like.

Since dang sees all the user flags he probably has a better idea of which discussions get flagged -- which discussions trigger heated arguments.

Why? If it's a valid criticism, why not. Sure, reading into things that take the thread into some tangent is bad; but otherwise, a call for clarification, even if nit-picking, is hard to judge objectively.

> The problem isn't the topic, it is how people discuss it

I agree, but only through objective and explicit guidelines can this be fixed.

> Ignore the ones that can't.

What I dislike more than a topic that is uninteresting to me, is people who also find it uninteresting, and yet comment on the fact. I don't dislike HN posts about apple, because I never read those posts, and it's usually obvious from the title what they are about.

How many white nationalists are there? How many conservatives are there?

I disagree.

Why lump an explicitly extreme group in with one that isn't so? Would you do the same with Muslims and Muslim extremists?

> sites like Breitbart who push these racially charged stories

A few examples? The daily mail, yes, but what of Breitbart in particular?

You label me "toxic" and dishonest, but you want me to just accept your assumptions? My "honest" dialogue is based on verifiable facts, not speculative slander.

(More of this and less mud slinging) on HN might actually move the needle

as opposed to

(More of this) and (less mud slinging on HN) might actually move the needle

I agree. I would like to figure out a way to encourage civil and constructive discourse on line in the interest of reaching and engaging more people. Offline is very important—probably more important—, as it reinforces the face-to-face social interaction.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, albeit in a slightly different context than pure politics.

When you say "encourage civil and constructive discourse", it implies that you wish to engage people who disagree. One conclusion I've reached is that it is best to instead engage like-minded people.

The idea of "reaching across" to form consensus or stimulate constructive debate among people who don't agree sounds really good on paper. But, at the end of the day--if you actually want to get anything done--then you don't want to spend your energy convincing people of the rightness of your beliefs. And, looking at this last U.S. election, there seem to be vanishingly few folks for whom facts matter. So much is emotionally-driven that convincing others becomes all the more difficult. It's not impossible, but the ROI just isn't there.

Even if you're not looking into doing something, but just want stimulating discussion, it's a trap at virtually any significant scale. It will inevitably devolve into something emotional and non-constructive. It's unfortunate, but it only takes a few trolls to trash an online community.

- As online discourse/experience becomes an increasing part of people's lives, the more important it will be to be able to have these types of discussions (and not just pure politics).

- People aren't as binary as the US Presidential election or right/left or whatever other labels would have us believe. There are things people disagree on, and if we're only to engage with people that we agree 100% with, we're not going to have very many people to talk to. It's not so much convincing others as it is finding the commonalities we already share and can easily forget when we see things as black and white.

Anyway, I'm not asking you to agree with those points. Just wanted to elaborate. And I agree with you on the "few trolls" point.

So, having said all that, where do you stand on Political Detox Week? Worth doing?

This is why I support a moratorium on politics here. This kind of assumption and hyperbole is really off-putting. I'm happy to debate these topics, but not here.

Now, that said, it's going to be a little murky. For example, I want to examine Ed Ou's detention at the US border. What if something breaks about Snowden or Assange? How about net neutrality?

I think this is exactly the place to do it as the people who would be involved in its creation are likely here. Where else would be a better place?

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/24/...

"No, he would not rule out a database on all Muslims. But for now, he wants a database for refugees."

And most importantly - it wasn't him that brought up the idea, he was asked this "John F. Kennedy is not a homosexual"-style. The fact that he failed to clarify either way was then reported in ambiguous snippets giving the impression that he had brought this up.

Even an insinuation that someone has a connection with an undesirable group apparently makes it legitimate to repeatedly ask them about it. I think such a low-bar to interrogation is not enough; sometime even being repeatedly asked something can give the impression that it might be true (or more likely), "big lie"-style.

>I don't understand why people on the left assume he was lying all of the times he delivered toned down statements and was only telling the truth when at the most extreme.

As someone on the left, it bothers me too. The guy has said many, sometimes mutually contradictory or impossible things, and has never given any indication of having reached some final disposition on anything. People somehow ignore everything he says that they could agree with as random lies, but analyze every year old tossed off tweet where he references some irrational policy or false fact as established policy of the next administration.

He creates a precarious environment for businesses that rely on established relationships with the traditional Republican and Democratic leadership group, and a precarious environment for minority groups due to his white identity politics pandering during the campaign. It's created such a distorted public discourse around the man that somehow Ted Cruz got painted as a more reasonable alternative. The institutional media attacks him in order to defend their business interests, and the majority (who are each a minority in some way), defend any media critique uncritically. The guy is not the devil, it's just in your interests to paint him as the devil if he isn't friends with the congresspeople that you own, and he's said enough contradictory stuff that your job is easy. Really, on social issues he ran as a mainstream Republican but with faux straight talk rhetoric that felt like it went further when it really didn't - if you're terrified of him, you should have been terrified of any of them. There are Muslim registries, they're just locked within accountable and unexaminable intelligence organizations, large and small. There is a wall. These were institutions born from bipartisanship.

Nevertheless, he's dangerous as any president could be, and more unpredictable than any president we have ever had. It's more important that we talk about the stuff he has said, not less. Whether or not you take it at face value is irrelevant when it's all you have to plan around. What's the alternative; to wait and see, and after it happens, start thinking about it? You shouldn't need to assume the earthquake will result in a tsunami to start preparing for it.

Your comment shows something that does disturb me on HN, though - comments that are being flagged for disagreement, rather than downvoted.

I don't understand why people on the left assume he was lying all of the times he delivered toned down statements and was only telling the truth when at the most extreme.

Make sense now?

What we have is a future president (ugh...) who has repeatedly shown himself to change his mind at the drop of a hat, be easily engaged and enraged on social media, and who has a long career (since long before he even considered running or POTUS in the 90s) of racism and misogyny (not to mention admitting to and taking pride in sexual assault...).

The fact that we DON'T know what he truly intends to do is terrifying, and that is why people discuss it. We know what he has said he intends to do .We know that some stuff he has backpedaled on, only to come back a few days later. That is exactly why people feel a need to discuss it.

And we also know that his vice president and growing cabinet are much more consistently "on message".

Care to elaborate? Or is this more second-hand media?

> The fact that we DON'T know what he truly intends to do is terrifying

Depends if you're happy with the status-quo, or unhappy with it. For some, the idea of things staying the same are terrifying.

Incidentally, were you not worried about a Dem war with Russia?

Ok. When did he say he would build a list of Muslims from Facebook? What is that based on?

Obama actually did target conservatives with the IRS[1] and nobody on here wasting time speculating what he might or might not do even though he clearly does things that weren't in his campaign speeches and lied about other things ("you can keep your plan"[2]).

My point is that suddenly a ton of young liberal people that lived most of their adult life with Democrat in the white house have someone they didn't vote for in office and they don't have the maturity to deal with it. It's constant over-the-top messaging about the end of the country and when Republicans did the same thing during Obama's presidency ("death panels", "secret muslim", etc), they were laughed out of the room as they should have been. It's embarrassing coming from the side that touted things like "facts tend to be liberal".

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

2. http://www.politifact.com/obama-like-health-care-keep/

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/20/donal...

> Donald J. Trump, who earlier in the week said he was open to requiring Muslims in the United States to register in a database, said on Thursday night that he “would certainly implement that — absolutely.” Mr. Trump was asked about the issue by an NBC News reporter and pressed on whether all Muslims in the country would be forced to register. “They have to be,” he said. “They have to be.’’ ... Asked later, as he signed autographs, how such a database would be different from Jews having to register in Nazi Germany, Mr. Trump repeatedly said, “You tell me,” until he stopped responding to the question.

NYTimes didn't provide those, right?

"While many headlines came out after this exchange saying Trump would "absolutely" require Muslims to register in a database, it’s not entirely clear that’s what he said."

"Through the end of the conversation, it’s possible Trump thought the exchange was about illegal immigration."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/24/...

Tell me what you think of Trumps reply wrt that last "Nazi Germany" question from NBC?

I think it's fair to say that we can't be totally certain what the intention of his administrations are; though this is trivially true in all cases, I never seriously questioned the possibility of such a thing with previous administrations. As I mentioned in another comment, failing to distance himself from such a comment when given the opportunity later does alarm me.

> Tell me what you think of Trumps reply wrt that last "Nazi Germany" question from NBC?

I read it as ducking the question. What do you make of it?

Ok, this is reasonable. There have been some indications that Trump might be softening on the issue. Language alluding to this policy was removed from his campaign website on election night, for instance, and it hasn't really come up since (at least from him). I'm still very concerned that it was said at all, but you can certainly make an argument that this statement doesn't represent the current state of things.

> well then why is Obama so highly regarded by the left?

You have veered into defensive tribalism. We are not discussing in what regard Trump is held, but rather the likelihood of him implementing a particular policy based on what he has said about it. Whether or not liberals forgave Obama's transgressions is irrelevant to a muslim registry.

You express a fear that Trump is going to somehow strongarm, subpoena, or otherwise force tech companies to roll over and give over private data on every Muslim in the US. Notwithstanding the massive technical challenge involved there, I'm fairly certain such a request would be met with significant opposition at some stage - from judicial challenges, to company refusal, to public backlash. It simply is not a situation that can reasonably happen (especially quietly), no matter how loudly Trump might yell about it.

Additionally, you must keep in mind that a sizeable fraction of the population had very similar fears (re: gun control, healthcare, socialism, etc.) when Obama was elected in 2008. These folks were scared of what Obama would do based on what he promised to do. In the end, checks and balances won out, and Obama didn't end up doing many of the things he promised to do. (He's still a great president, though - in my opinion of course).

It's normal to be scared in these times, but it's not a good idea to lose your head. Trump can say a lot of terrible, terrible things - people are literally entitled to say whatever they want in this country - but if you rationally analyze the feasibility of his plans you'll realize that most of them aren't actually doable. And, you may also realize that some of his plans are even good for the country - for example, infrastructure spending is a proven way to improve the economy, and it is something that the US quite desperately needs (see: John Oliver).

Now, I shouldn't need to say this on a forum like this, but I am by no means a fan of Trump. I think that his rhetoric is dangerous, but he _is_ going to be president, and that means working with him to establish the best policies and compromises going forward, rather than stubbornly refusing outright to work with him.

The political opposition is likely to collapse in waves: public opinion seems to be moving towards intolerance, and any additional terrorist attacks related to Islam would continue the shift; the GOP controlled Congress may support Trump as vehemently as they have opposed Obama; the 105 federal judicial vacancies that should have been filled by Obama will instead be filled by Trump, possibly including multiple Supreme Court seats; and it will be very difficult for the companies themselves to fail to comply with court orders. For example, look at the huge battle to coerce Apple to unlock a single phone. Under a Trump presidency there would be substantially more pressure on tech companies.

My experience with conservative, religiously-motivated Americans (including many dear friend and family members) while growing up in a red state makes me think that (some subset) may be willing to tolerate substantial harm to themselves, the economy, and the founding principals of the USA so long as the "greater good" is achieved: prohibiting abortion, increasing the influence of Christianity on government, increased need for religious charity due to reduced social welfare programs, and the lower taxes that they've been told are a panacea. This makes me believe that compromising with Trump will look more like acquiescing to him.

I also think that some portion of the the conservative-leaning public was misled about Obama and were afraid of what they thought he would do, not what he said he would do. What could have been reasonable compromises about restricting certain types of gun sales and ownership, controlling healthcare costs through single payer policies or some other government intervention (which are considered mainstream in other first world countries) were opposed as a slippery slope to elimination of private gun ownership and destruction of American capitalism. These were not rational fears, but were effective at catalyzing conservative voters.

You can argue that e.g. "Obama was a great president!" or that "Obama was an awful president!" and there are arguments to back both sides of the discussion depending on where you're coming from.

I'll take the bait.

About a little of a year ago, when I worked in a lab, some of my colleagues routinely laughed and mocked Trump and boasted how he had no chance in hell (as well as fueling fire with continued patronage of sites and news that gave them more of the same "entertainment" [in their words]), and no amount of me pointing out to them the environment that enabled a such a persona to exist/rise to fame/power should be the topic of conversation rather than on the team $x circus ring leader de jour.

From where I stand, the problem with a ban on political discussion isn't really the content of it, just the intellectual naivety that one can shield themselves political discussion while ignoring all the not so hidden influences of such on ones culture, thought processes, and etc is laughable will only end in rude awakenings, because in reality such a ban can only be superficial, and never really cut to the heart of such issues that underpin political discussion.

Like another commentator said: "Talk is cheap and political discussion is especially cheap" and I'd add that superficial bans to hide or sideline political discussion, are can be incredibly expensive (filter bubbles, walled gardens, deep packet inspections, paid "moderators", "cultural fit" selectors) in the search of temporarily being in control, yet ultimately futile.

The way I see it, the mods are asking us all to hold our political tongues and see what the comments feel like. They're very clear that it's an experiment. Maybe when politics resume seven days from now, people will remember what quality discourse looks like. This is mods trying to keep the conversation good.

It is silly, but not completely silly.

One doesn't have to cross over into tinfoil-hat territory to wonder if sama, paulg, or other YC partners knew about the meeting ahead of time. Assuming they knew, it then isn't outlandish to wonder if they nudged the moderators into doing the experiment now as opposed to some other time without disclosing the reason.

That said, I don't subscribe to this chain of suppositions (or at least, I don't assign it more than ~10% chance of being true).

In any case, even if any YC partners did know about the meeting, I imagine they would be paying more attention to the absence of YC portfolio companies from the invitation list rather than considering new moderation policies to shape discourse on HN to their (supposed) advantage.

> and certainly totally wrong.

Having little reason to doubt you, and considerably more to take you at your word, this is more than good enough for me under the circumstances.

HN is one of the few places where informed discussion is actually possible and even opposing views (as long as they are objective and well reasoned) are adding to the discussion (and often upvoted). Shutting that off just because of some unfounded downvotes or trolling in times where such discussions are extremely important is cowardly and a very sad move in my opinion. HN is better (and more important) than you think.

In any event its an editorial decision: HN is a medium/tool of ycombinator and they decided that this is necessary in order to preserve its value.

I think we should aim for reasonable ratios. Maybe we should have an algorithm that categorized stories and tried to create a certain ratio of tech:politics:curiosities:startups, for example?

edit: grammer

How can technology be separated from the subject of power when the future of democracy in the most powerful nation in the World is at stake?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3dvbM6Pias

And yet, teaching people new things tends to affect the world more than political discussion ever could. I'm happy that HN exists as a solace from the political storm the rest of the world is wrapped up in.

Of course politics will affect each of us. But as tptacek is fond of saying, HN can't be all things to all people. It's more important to preserve the spirit of the site than to affect change. (In fact, it seems like one comes at the cost of the other.)

Let's not pretend that we can talk about the current political spectrum with anything near the certainty and information we have about Nazi Germany, the economic policies that were involved at the time, the propaganda used, and the world events at the time.

Aside from news and politics itself, I can hardly think of anything more political than history. People with different nationalities and sometimes party affiliations usually have wildly different perception of historic facts. Whether the Holocaust happened or not is an obvious and well-publicized one (I believe it did, for the record), but there's an uncountable amount of subtler and/or less famous differences in how humans perceive history.

Who is the deity that gets to determine what the "spirit of the site" is? Is that spirit not simply made up of the collective users and dynamic by nature?

Ideology is present everywhere. It's built in to the ways we relate to each other, to our employers, to the public and private institutions and technologies we interact with all the time, and especially the way we work and conceive of work. Ideology is often tacit, baked into our assumptions even in "non-political" areas.

Squelching political discussion won't cause us all to transcend ideology, it'll just make it impossible to discuss or critique a dominant ideology whenever one shows up in someone's unstated assumptions.

This is a bad idea and a little dystopian (the world is upside down, but think happy thoughts, folks! Here's a TED talk!)

Not to mention I didn't really see a huge problem on the site, so in a time when politics and ideology are on everyone's minds for good reason, it seems you've chosen to solve a non-problem with censorship.

> the world is upside down, but think happy thoughts, folks! Here's a TED talk!

It's sort of a peeve of mine that people project this onto us because I can't say how I really feel about it without breaking our own rules.

As for how people see your actions: labeling it as "projecting" might make you feel better, but probably gets in the way of you understanding what they're saying.

In today's environment, you can't simultaneously make the site an welcoming place for people who are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti-trans (etc.) - and for people who are Muslim, immigrant, women, trans and nonbinary people (etc) or allies to any of these groups. What people are telling you is that they see YC - and you personally - as siding with the bigots.

You're right, though, that I shouldn't use the word 'project' like that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Does political discussion not gratify intellectual curiosity? I'd say that I'm definetly curious to see others political opinions. This is a ban on a discussion topic as arbitrary as banning discussion of IC vs Passives.

Not letting people hear opposing view points is more detrimental then seeing a view point you disagree with.

Yes, political discussion can gratify intellectual curiosity. Empirically it hasn't worked out very well on HN.

To me, your comment completely ignores the paragraphs written by dang in the submission, both the content, and the fact that it's temporary. What do you think of the intent? Do you disagree? Have you seen or participated in any of the recent (past two or three months) of political threads on HN? Do you have showdead on so you can see what's being posted and flagged? Do you think it's okay? If you don't agree with the intent or think there is an issue, that would put your comment in one context. If you agree it's an issue and disagree with the political detox week, then that's another. Would you elaborate on your comment?

I disagree. It's worked out smashingly well on HN (judgingnit context of 25 or so years of engagement in online fora of various types); the appearance that it has not is due to unrealistic standards, and radical reconfigurations to deal with the supposed failures are likely to lead to more harm to HNs goal of providing a forum for gratifying intellectual curiosity than benefit.

Couldn't you also enable an enhanced slow mode on threads that seem political in nature? Maybe something like the "hate tax" system proposed here[1].

I feel as though political topics tend to generate a knee-jerk response in people, especially when they are in an...shall we say, altered state of mind. The more controversial a topic is, the slower the pace of discussion should be IMHO. Exponentially so.

[1] https://zedshaw.com/archive/ragel-state-charts/

If you had no intent to push this for longer, why even try it in the first place? What if I, and everyone else in this thread, is wrong and this turns out to be a magnificent idea and makes the site a better for everyone.

Now since this is so amazing, why not make it perminent?

The cynical in me is also asking, who gets to judge if this is a success or a failure? The community? The vocal portion of the community? The YC staff? You?

I trust none of those groups with as important of a disition as this nor do I want a precident set on any social media platform I use that a specific topic can be completely banned from discussion.

For the reasons I gave: (1) taking a one-week breather from the kind of stories that erupt into flamewars seemed like a good way to remind us all of the values of this site (intellectual curiosity and civil discussion), and (2) we hoped we'd learn some things. As indeed we have.

Should we also ban discussion on Javascript frameworks? How about we ban all discussion on the founder of Soylent? Those threads tend to lay on the side of ideological bullying.

> seemed like a good way to remind us all of the values of this site (intellectual curiosity and civil discussion)

No sufficiently intelligent group would avoid the biological imperatives that set in motion the basis for political events or discussion.

> we hoped we'd learn some things. As indeed we have

Comeing from a company as YC this is very scary. I'm glad that it has become evident that this, at least currently, won't fly with a large portion of the community. In the future I see the "innocently" minded as being the playthings of you and your friends at YC.

By the way, I use firearm to avoid negative connotation with gun.

I disagree completely with this. This is I'd say the one place online where people will actually try to provide a rebuttle to your statements. This is the perfect platform for debate on political subjects, adhominems are not taken lightly here and everyone seems able to keep a reasoned mind on what's being said.

>To me, your comment completely ignores the paragraphs written by dang in the submission, both the content, and the fact that it's temporary

dang's comments and posts are, as usual to me, completely indefensable and naive. To think that a site filled with well rounded people should the off limits to discussing politics? That's insane.

And on another note: it being temporary is not the issue. The issue is the idea behind the action. If we had "Temporary Slavery Week", or "Temporary Nazi/KKK Week", "Temporary Japanese Internment Week", or even "Temporary Ignore Reality Week" I would ABSOLUTLY not support these. So why should I, or anyone for that matter, support an idea or experiment devoid of any valid rationalization that would explain it's existance.

The only reasons I see to avoid political discussions are 1) You feel your community is too stupid to carry out this discussion, 2) You are afraid your ideas will be attacked and you won't be able to self-examin them, 3) You're too lazy to moderate your site, so to make it easier you're going to stop a hole class of discussion (that in my opinion is the most important form of discussion in a governed society) just to cut a bit of work off your plate.

All of these are positions I cannot agree with and SURELY I hope no one would expect a little bit of a vacancy of thought on topics of limited application. These are the times when thought is most critical. Wether it comes from banning politics for a week to court rulings who's only base to stand on is it's blatent "for the children" mentality.

> What do you think of the intent?

It's either intense laziness, malice, or ignorance (on a meta note, I intend for the "intense" modifier to apply to all these of these). None of these are good in my book.

> Do you disagree?

It seems like most people think that just because it's temporary it means it's ok. That's insanse. I absolutly do not agree.

> Have you seen or participated in any of the recent (past two or three months) of political threads on HN?

I regularly participate in political discussions about property rights, firearms laws, and in general scientific statistics that will provide political sway. I love these discussions as they often have to most complex and well rooted arguments from all sides of the spectrums.

> Do you have showdead on so you can see what's being posted and flagged?

I consider those who don't have this enabled to be burrying their heads in the sand. I've also got a custom CSS sheet on that removes the downvote-fade.

> Do you think it's okay?

What's ok? Do I think being coddled by admins saying "it's ok, I'll make the bad bad wrong-thinkers go away"? Not at all.

Do I think it's ok that people post their own opinions and others judge them? Of course. That's how discussion works.

> If you don't agree with the intent or think there is an issue, that would put your comment in one context. If you agree it's an issue and disagree with the political detox week, then that's another.

I haven't seen a problem but I do feel that there is likely one although this is all conjecture on my part. Find me a sample size of 30 comments that have been demonstrably downvoted because of opinion then I'll agree with you that it is an issue. Otherwise it is just speculation without data which is useless.

I ofcourse also have an issue with a detox week. That can just be called "Horse Blinders Week".

Could you share it?

(btw, favorited, thanks!)

Those are beliefs vs identity, a particularly tricky subject. The problem is when, I for example, don't see it that way; I see many of those "identities" to be beliefs also, beliefs about self.

As an example, to a Creationist, arguments about evolution are about identity - there are few boundaries to which subjects people involve their own self-worth/identity. A similar argument arises wrt trans people and the various proposed categories that have arisen - simply saying "this is who we are" is not enough, since exactly that is what is debated.

That said, I suspect you mean "you can't welcome both women, and people who hold anti-woman beliefs". But the labeling of any belief is itself a belief. Some of those idea you call "anti-women" can both be considered not anti-woman and be held by women e.g. not all feminist believe sexual content to be harmful to women, or the idea to be productive.

Still, the points I was making ''aren't'' tricky.

- For the dimensions that I listed (and implied with the "etc"), in today's environment, HN is kidding themselves by thinking they can welcome "both sides"

- the feedback they're getting is from people (including me) who see YC and 'dang personally as aligning themselves with the antis by blocking political discussion

> That said, I suspect you mean "you can't welcome both women, and people who hold anti-woman beliefs".

No, I meant very specifically that in today's context HN - and by extension YC - can't simultaneously be welcoming to anti-feminists - and welcoming to women and allies.

> can't simultaneously be welcoming to anti-feminists - and welcoming to women and allies.

ally is a feminist term, but why can't women be anti-feminist? Are you describing this to be the case, or prescribing it?

Yes, women can be anti-feminist. As you said, these are tricky issues.

If you haven't yet understood why many people see the political ban as aligning with this, then either you haven't tried very hard or your belief system is preventing you from understanding. There's plenty of information here and in other discussions, so give it another try.

why won't you say explicitly? Is there some nuance that cannot be stated?

> I don't see it as a good use of my time or energy to try to explain it to you

Is pretty arrogant, you have such high esteem for your perspective you don't think it could be wrong, in fact I'm biased for not understanding it;

You're suggesting, instead, that I must have to go on some mysterious journey-of-self, as if you were a wise zen master furnishing me with enlightenment; rather than supporting your own, somewhat basic, claim that "the ban supports the antis"...

Maybe it's my biases, but that seems pretty passive-aggressive.

You might be suggesting an unconscious and in a sense innocent psychological bias.

I also allow that a comment like the GP is in a style intended to twist and inflame. In this context the motivation could be to keep HN on the trajecory of more noise.

Perhaps people aren't projecting so much as seeing your rules as a reflection of your beliefs, which you now say they are not.

This is Hacker News. It's not the front page of Reddit, it's a niche site with a clear remit. I'm absolutely fine with any general political discussion being permanently flagged as off topic. If people want to discuss something like internet censorship or science funding, I think this may be an appropriate venue. Discussions about the technology of politics like econometrics, polling error or voting machine design may also be relevant. Beyond that, the internet has no shortage of places to discuss politics; many of them have a vastly higher calibre of political discourse than HN.

Can you (or anyone) point us to these? Not being sarcastic, but also somewhat skeptical - I've never encountered another public forum of HN's overall quality.

I think the metaphor about the geology lecture is misleading - HN isn't a lecture hall, it's an exhibition hall, and if the only criteria for something being an exhibit is a capacity to intellectually stimulate, then I don't see why political discussion should be precluded.

This is a false premise. I've spent my week at a large scientific conference.

We have continually had panels re: our role and responsibility as scientists in the current political environment. Talks on hard technical issues have often included comments alluding to these roles and responsibilities.

Technologists are so deeply involved in the way that modern society perceives the world outside their immediate community that it's absurd to believe they can be apolitical.

Technologists need to discuss their roles and responsibilities as well.

So no -- you would not be thrown out of a room for bringing up politics in a Geology lecture.

HN isn't a Geology lecture at all. It's more like a quad at an engineering school. We're here because we're curious, we like to build things, we want to help create a better world. We cannot do that while insulating ourselves from the reality of our world's most powerful organizations and their leaders.

How about a meta-discussion concerning tactics for countering young-Earth creationism claims?

The way this sounds is that you are more concerned about politics as in people who take party positions and may feel excluded as a group when the majority of the community takes a different position. This is a slightly different issue i.e. party politics, and I think it is fine/a good thing, but it is also important to distinguish the two. This should essentially be under the same umbrella as personal attacks, as they are essentially the same thing.

I'd rather see HN go politics-free forever. Political discussions do not enjoy the same level of objectivity that technical and business discussions do. Frankly, it may be impossible to expect objectivity within political discussion because our political feelings are so deeply-held and tied to our individual upbringings, culture, and locale.

Unless HN can figure out how to give fair treatment to minority opinions, it's best to exclude these discussions entirely.

I'm all for flagging uncivilized discussions, but eliminating discussions outright because they might make people feel uncomfortable or might turn uncivil seems like we are missing a really important piece to the news we discuss here.

Minority opinions are never going to have "fair treatment" by the majority. I've been down voted several times for my opinions and I'll take it again just to be able to have the discussion here.

I also don't think that the hacker spirit responds well to barriers of thought and discussion.

It's just an anecdote, but I know my views have been greatly affected in part by hacker news. I was once a staunch libertarian, but reading a lot about universal basic income and other approaches people have offered to income inequality and social issues, while talking about the technology trends first and foremost, have convinced me to broaden my beliefs.

There is something about having a stated goal outside of political points scoring that helps everyone see themselves as part of the same team. I've always felt hacker news is largely about understanding things related to technology - trends, weird bugs, how startups work, etc. With that as our main focus we can defer to each other and learn from each other. When the main force is to debate the other side there is no room for concessions or finding common ground.

What I want in a community, is for people of all different views and backgrounds to think about a topic with the end goal of solving some problem. Hacker news isn't perfect there but it's close.

I know I just learned something from this meta discussion, about the argument that the economy can't support UBI based on GDP numbers, and I'm eager to go read more. Most arguments I have seen say it won't work because of moral hazards and I haven't seen an argument that says it flat out can't be done, because there are so many different approaches and different ways it could play out.

[0]https://xkcd.com/1053/

So many of the technologies that we use have political consequences or undertones—the reason that we have these discussions here is that otherwise it's not possible to have a substantial discussion about the technology at all. We'd be reduced to meaningless small talk.

The reality is that the "latest and greatest JS framework" and how I can use it to make my clients happy is likely to have far greater impact on my family's situation than arguing endlessly about national and international politics. Arguing about politics online is about as useful to your personal situation as arguing about football team uniforms or Dancing with the Stars celebrity scores.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614

We can clarify, though. The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet.

But it is no secret that US conservatives are a lot more pro-fossil fuels and US liberals are less anti-renewables. In that context, who is in power determines who is approving budgets and who is giving subsidiaries and incentives.

To remove the ability to acknowledge the political aspect of things would lead to

"I wish we spent more on wind power." being responded to with "Well, we would if <COMMENT REMOVED DUE TO RULE VIOLATION>"

I don't think that should be political, I don't think it should be red-versus-blue. But it is. Should that be banned?

And it's not just about finding out that I'm completely wrong. Sometimes it's just a new light, and sometimes it's just the reminder that really smart people too believe some things that I didn't think were possible for a "reasonable smart person" to believe (if you don't think you need constant reminding of this, ... well ... haha ;-) )

I trust that the admins want the best for the community.