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[return to "Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week"]
1. tarikj+34[view] [source] 2016-12-05 19:44:40
>>dang+(OP)
I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a scientific community, but it is not the case, and even then politics do interact with science, as one can conduct scientific experiments on government decisions, or politics can attack scientific community positions (e.g. climate change).

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.

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2. md224+Cb[view] [source] 2016-12-05 20:27:08
>>tarikj+34
> I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand.

This community already has its head in the sand. Political topics are flagged to oblivion, and even those that aren't inevitably inspire so much discussion that the flamewar detector goes off and nukes the thread.

Imagine: in an era where we rail against filter bubbles, a website punishes threads that are too active!

The Devil's Advocate says "Hey now, there's certainly a time and place for political discussion, but HN is a tech forum, not a political forum." Good point, but HN is also a Third Place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place), and being a Third Place means promoting Civic Engagement. I agree that HN should strive to stay on topic, but there is plenty of overlap between tech and politics and I think that space deserves to be explored by the community.

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3. ythn+tj[view] [source] 2016-12-05 21:09:42
>>md224+Cb
I already get TONS of political crap thrown at me on facebook and reddit, why would I want my last bastion of pure, unadulterated technology news also tainted by the very thing I'm trying to avoid? I want to come here to discuss code and technology, not to argue about Trump or Clinton.
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4. madaxe+fl[view] [source] 2016-12-05 21:19:57
>>ythn+tj
So, where would a story about the code in voting machines sit? Anathema?

I agree that HN does not need walls of bickering partisan flames, but outlawing discussions of politics and ethics is not the way to go in my mind.

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5. ythn+Jl[view] [source] 2016-12-05 21:22:08
>>madaxe+fl
I don't see any reason a story about voting machines couldn't be strictly technical. What politics would you even want to discuss?
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6. bduers+dq[view] [source] 2016-12-05 21:50:09
>>ythn+Jl
That entirely depends on the requirement priority for the user experience being based on agnostic fact, not opinion.

But as we know, some parties prefer more stringer voter identification at the expense of supression, and vice versa.

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7. nickod+sv[view] [source] 2016-12-05 22:26:25
>>bduers+dq
You can have a discussion about how to implement voter ID without deciding whether it's a good idea overall, or whether it violates the VRA.

In fact, most voting machines don't check ID at all; they leave that to the humans. (If they did check ID, the machines could secretly match votes to names.)

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8. bduers+ax[view] [source] 2016-12-05 22:38:10
>>nickod+sv
Whether or not they have it now is irrelevant (it's an example) - any proposed technology would inevitably see this requirement, and others, being identified based on opinion, not fact.
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