zlacker

Did you think talking about SOPA on HN makes sense? Talking about the legality/morality of NSA snooping?

What about Uber's woker policies? Facebook censorship/curation? Data privacy?

Hiring and firing policies in tech companies?

How to manage rogue IoT devices? ICANN domain policy?

This is just a sample of topics that feel pretty "Hacker News". They're all political (or at least have strong political angles), and they're all pretty popular topics of conversation here.

Now I've felt the moderation here has worked in good faith, and is likely trying to reduce flamewars here. But I'm a bit worried that the things that get marked political will mainly be around discrimination issues.

And considering the amount of SV "leadership"(scare quotes but you get the idea) on Hacker News, this is a _very_ effective forum to talk about the difficulties of certain people to get work, get funding. Talking about it here can jumpstart more ways of tackling these issues, and thinking about what the community as a whole wants to do

>>rtpg+(OP)
The old rule of not having discussions that reintroduce flame wars which arguments have been stated, restated, and re-restated is a rather useful criteria.

Unless grounded and significant structured, discussion about discrimination aren't going to bring any new ways of addressing things. What it commonly do is just expanding the battlefield and pushing people further apart. Even between those that agree on the goal, people can and do still disagree on how to reach it. I have described it in the past as comparing left and right politics, with both side wanting prosperity and liberty. Each side has fundamental different views and values for how that will be accomplished, so the discussion circles around the disagreement rather than the agreements.

>>belorn+n3
Is it really easier to ban the topic than to ban the flame war? Flame wars are already forbidden.

>>mattne+94
I think that's a fair question. That said, I think it's important to balance where the effort is expended. Cleaning up flame wars requires work on the part of the moderator at very little cost to those fanning the flames.

To perhaps abuse an analogy, when a neighborhood gets well known for arson, people will move away. At some point it may make sense to forbid certain types of structures in the neighborhood to see if it reduces the instances of arson. (okay, that's admittedly pretty tortured :)

It's a trade off, and while I'd like the world to be perfect and people talk about everything calmly and with respect, empirically this is very much not the case for certain topics. A limited test (detox week) makes sense to me. And it might not work, which is why it's a test.

>>belorn+n3
I think maybe a trial week of "agreement awareness" would be a fun exercise.

On these sorts of discussions, talking about what is actionable, what we can do to reach common goals.

Though there are pretty fundamental disagreements among people on these as well, and I'm not sure where the discussion can go (for example University quotas).

But trying to get HN to be more positive overall would be encouraging. I believe this was done for Show HN stuff, having it done overall seems like an interesting next step.

Even just a msg above the reply box like "Hey, you're talking to another human being! And probably agree on a lot of things"

>>belorn+n3
Doesn't this mean that to veto any topic, all you need to do is stir it up?

> Each side has fundamental different views and values for how that will be accomplished

counter this though: the left (at least at the moment) feel pretty comfortable flinging labels around? Is this just a vocal minority calling Trump/supporters a fascist(s)?