zlacker

I'd have a lot more confidence in the unbiased nature of a request like this if it was suggested prior to the outcome of the election. It's not like things were less contentious then.

Say if this were announced the day before the election, regardless of the outcome, with a hold period of say a month.

>>koolba+(OP)
Arguably deciding to kibosh political chat before the election would've been even more contentious, because it could be seen as trying to affect the outcome of the election.

No matter who you favor right now, political discussion helps nobody. The outgoing President can't do anything much, and the incoming President can't do anything much either. Nothing you read in the next two months is realistically going to lead to you having a meaningful impact on anything, more than likely.

>>ocdtre+V
> Arguably deciding to kibosh political chat before the election would've been even more contentious, because it could be seen as trying to affect the outcome of the election.

I meant stating prior to the outcome of the election that after the election, regardless of the outcome, there would be an N-day moratorium on political discussions to allow the community to decompress. Maybe even start it a day after the election as obviously it'd be the news of the day on election day + 1.

>>koolba+(OP)
I don't think I can fault dang for not being around for the Bush v. Gore (hanging chad) election, and the bitterness that it engendered on slashdot. Had he been paying attention then, he likely would've drawn parallels quickly and done exactly what you have said. I'll take him at face value when he says it was an action that should've been done in retrospect, but I'm not sure others won't be so quck to judge, if one is mindful of how much time the average HN reader thinks about a particular post or topic.

>>koolba+k1
This might actually be a good idea for every yearly election.

I'm of the opinion that, had HN banned political threads for a month after Prop 8, Eich would've still been in charge of the Mozilla Corporation. Which, I guess, means I view HN as a kingmaker.

EDIT: Modified post to be less flamebaity. I was genuinely interested in discussing HN's role in previous political stories.

>>koolba+(OP)
> I'd have a lot more confidence in the unbiased nature of a request like this if it was suggested prior to the outcome of the election.

Can't help you there. We don't have anything like that degree of finesse in planning.

The way it works is, we do our job and think about it a lot, and don't pay that much attention to other stuff, and when we think something is a good idea and finally get around to it, we do it. About the only thought that went into political timing was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13098321.

>>anonba+U1
Well, you're introducing a flamewar topic into a thread about how harmful those are and how we're taking a week off from them. I don't think the downvotes need much explaining.

>>dang+j6
(emphasis mine):

> The way it works is, we do our job and think about it a lot, and don't pay that much attention to other stuff, and when we think something is a good idea and finally get around to it, we do it.

I do sincerely believe the italicized last part.

I also suspect that nobody on the HN mod team thought that Trump would actually win. It was such a far off concept that planning for it and the ensuing gloating / division / trolling would have been laughable. If they did, they would have put more thought into stating this type of thing in advance as I'm pretty sure it's been suggested more than once over the past few months.

>>dang+77
fair enough. I though I had it couched in enough padding (it's my opinion, after all) that nobody would take that bait. My hope was that someone would debate whether or not HN is a kingmaker, or that it actually influenced the Eich situation. It was not to argue over whether that action was right or wrong.

>>koolba+oa
Even if we had guessed, we don't plan for things like who might win an election. That would be crazymaking.