zlacker

>>capabl+(OP)
> Still, as an occasional reader, I have noticed certain trends. When stories that focus on structural barriers faced by women in the workplace, or on diversity in tech, or on race or masculinity—stories, admittedly, that are more intriguing to me, a person interested in the humanities, than stories on technical topics—hit the front page, users often flag them, presumably for being off topic, so fast that hardly any comments accrue.

I have noticed this trend for a long time also, and well before this article was first written. It seems to go in waves though I'll cautiously say that it seems to have gotten somewhat better in recent years. I remember a time in the mid-2010s when these kinds of stories would disappear almost instantaneously. Now some of these articles and topics get a good number of upvotes and occasionally even substantive dialogue.

That said, the comments sections on these articles do tend to devolve pretty quickly.

>>belfal+Nh
I just stend to stay clear of certain topics on HN. It's not that I'm not open to different viewpoints on the internet, it's that these comment sections are filled with bad-faith arguing and are just bound to make me angry. If I wanted that, I could just go to Reddit or Twitter.

>>lvncel+li1
I know it's a complete impossibility, but some kind of "bad faith filter" would go a long way to making the comments much more pleasant.

I'm not sure what I should expect from a community that prides itself on its rationalist roots, but discussions are often disappointing nonetheless.

>>uoaei+it1
You'd be surprise how much of this noise can disappear from blocking maybe, a dozen frequently "passionate" commenters in a community like this. But block features aren't on the table last I checked.

>>johnny+VA1
There was an extension¹ posted a few years ago² which implements blocking on the client side. The possible issue is there may be some users who you wish to block in the general case that do add value in other threads, so you would have to weigh up those decisions.

However, it feels like a bad idea to me, if only because it reduces community building and curation a little. Without a mass of users taking action via flagging or reporting on community problems the end result will surely just tend towards submissions and comment threads that are simply garbage, as that is what new users would see as the social norms.

All that said, I wouldn't blame people for using it. There do seem to be a few members of this community that I'd not want to know in real life, and given their comments in some threads they'd not want to know me either ;)

Edit: I see you mentioned an extension in another thread, and this may be the same one. Still, I'll leave this here in case others want to see the links.

¹ https://github.com/morgante/hn_blocklist

² >>10005699