zlacker

"Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." HN Guidelines

But this is probably just my lurker observation. Not against all news but there should be at least some spark of insight of novelty. Feel free to flag now.

Edit: To expand a bit. What I like about HN is not that it's tech but it has plethora of very interesting topics and comments are almost always insightful (unlike this one). This headline is basically the whole article. The comments are therefore not guided by idea, but news. This topic is important but nothing comes out of these threads. This rant is contributing to bad quality of comments, one thing I always try to avoid.

>>lurkmu+(OP)
You don't think police attacks on journalists counts as an "interesting new phenomenon"?

>>simonw+K
It's hardly new in the us.

>>lurkmu+(OP)
> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon

Hundreds of journalists brutalised over the last week would seem to qualify, though for 'interesting' substitute 'horrifying'.

>>lurkmu+(OP)
News stories about freedom of speech and freedom of the press have always been welcome on HN, which is common in tech communities, and the words “most” and “probably” are doing a lot of work there.

This rule is fuzzy by design and I really don’t get why some people here are so pedantic about it.

>>lurkmu+(OP)
While this "off-topic" definition has always been a gray line, I'm definitely in favor of continuing discussion on hacker news. While it's not about technology per se, HN IMO has had the best discussions when it comes to freedom of information, and how to balance varying interests and definitions when it comes to freedom of information (e.g. is requiring you give up a password the same thing as requiring a physical key, what rights do police have to search your phone, etc.)

This topic is fundamentally about freedom of information and what level we are comfortable (or uncomfortable) limiting that freedom in certain situations.

>>dnauti+C1
It actually is. While the police have often attacked journalists I don't know that it has ever been so blatant, so well documented, and done so broadly across all journalists, even from the larger news networks that often have the clout and means to avoid such abuse.