zlacker

>>lordna+(OP)
This article does seem to get at the essence of HN, appreciative of dang and sctb's humanity while not ignoring the problems. Personally, I would actually consider it an excellent demonstration of the fallibility of one of HN's favourite tropes, Gell-Mann amnesia.

If there's one critique that I believe is paramount it's that HN has, due to its readership, an ethical obligation that goes beyond making discussions all nice and civil.

Political issues are obviously divisive and it's perfectly fine to keep stuff like the El Paso massacre of the front page. But when hot-button issues intersect with technology, the HN readership is in a position of power, and shouldn't routinely be spared the anguish of being reminded of their responsibility.

Yes, articles about, for example, discriminatory ML do often make it to the front page. But in my impression, that topic (as well as employment discrimination, culture-wars-adjacent scandals in tech academia etc) are far more likely to be quickly flagged into oblivion than similarly political takes that just happen to be in line with HN's prevailing attitude (e.g. cloudflare-shouldnt-ban-<x>).

The article impressively articulates what toll divisiveness takes on the moderators: Even if I read the same ugly comments, I am unlikely to experience the sharpness of emotion that apparently comes with considering the community one's baby, and making it's failures one's own. When such divisiveness is then reflected in the "real world" of mass media, the pressure only increases.

But as this article shows, abdicating the responsibility by keeping the topics sterile is similarly suspect, in the sense of fiddling while Rome burns. I believe a willingness to confront the ugly sides of technology with some courage of conviction would eventually be recognised, even if it may occasionally involve a bit of a mess.

>>IfOnly+L4
A good test to see if a topic make sense to discuss on HN is if people are willing to calmly discuss the merits of it.

The author says they are interested in the humanities and like to see articles focus on structural barriers faced by women in the workplace. I doubt however they want to see article discussing the merits of the topic, i.e. if women does face barriers in the work place. The result is that anyone who does not share the same perspective is not welcome in the discussion and the environment from that confrontation produce the opposite of thoughtful and substantive discussion.

Political discussion does not need to end like that and many topics which does not have the above property do pop up in HN.

>>belorn+4j
That might have few false-positives (being wrong when we say "this is good for HN"), but the false negatives would be huge. There's plenty on topic that still devolves into flame wars. Off the top of my head, these seem clearly on topic but discussion devolves: Vim vs Emacs. Javascript vs anything. Static vs dynamic types. Apple's keyboards. OpenAI.