zlacker

>>uuilly+(OP)
I realized a long time ago that indignation about political issues was for forums what bad currency is in Gresham's law. We actively compensate for that in various ways. Sometimes when an issue seems a genuinely big deal and/or of particular interest to hackers, we compensate less. It's always a judgment call. But don't worry, if HN declines through indignation about "issues," it won't be by default. We've fended that off for years, and I'm optimistic we'll continue to.

>>pg+C6
I've read through (some of) your essays on HN design and think that, ultimately, you will have to introduce a little more complexity to handle posts that relate to identity cleanly.

The best option that I can see is to allow users to mark a post as 'off-topic' in addition to 'flag'. Subtract the off-topic count in some fashion and generate second set of rankings. Then allow users to chose between the normal front-page and the filtered front-page.

It would not split the community into have/have-nots and it would enable a little self-selected filtering. It feels like a general enough case that it would have merit across a wide range of posts.

It would also provide a lot more information upon which to make judgment calls.

Fascinating site you've got going. This is the only place where I can actually stand to read the comments.