http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2402027
politics? I don't think so. Economic inequality is a very interesting social phenomenon, though it is often written about in a heated/political way.
Or to make that more concrete, would you forward that link to multiple portfolio CEOs and suggest they take time out of their day to read it and discuss it?
"Common sense isn't all that common"
Two main problems: 1) everything is politics and current events. That is, everything touches in some way on what's going on in the world and how you feel about it. Maybe I'm applying too broad a brush, but I can see politics and current events in every post on HN -- and always have. About the only exceptions would be the driest of technical articles. If you want a board of Erlang innards, go for it. Other than that, it's always going to be Steve Jobs, EFF, which VC trashes which other, etc -- all gossip. (And gossip is just a broad term for current events and politics)
People post, comment, and vote based on emotional response. You can pretend to cut that out by banning, say, any mention of political parties or politicians, perhaps any pending legislation, and past legislation, how economics prevents or helps startup creation, etc -- but I think you'll just trade one monster for another.
2) I've been thinking about this for a while, and the key problem here is that the commenting system promotes learning how to fit into a community of hackers, not actually doing anything useful. We think of the system as being some sort of logical function to take all kinds of input and provide the "best" stuff for hackers, but it's exactly the opposite: it teaches hackers how to get votes from other hackers. In other words, spend 3 or 4 years on here, like JacquesM did, and if you're lucky you become an expert on what to say and do to make large groups of hackers agree with you. The karma system and large crowds isn't training the material to be more targeted to hackers -- it's training hackers on how to target other hacker's response with their material: how to fit in, what to post to get a rise, how to succeed without really trying, etc.
You can blame the topics for being too emotional, but I think it misses the point. We've always had all kinds of issues on here. What we're getting is a larger pool of people actively gaming the system in hundreds of ways: what kinds of snide comments might sneak by, what's the best time to run flame-war submissions, who to praise, what topics to champion or deride. That's a function of forum size, not system parameters. And that's not even getting into the fact that with a large enough audience, somebody is going to get pumped about just about anything that appears on the front page.
There's nothing nefarious about this. It's all just people being humans. After all, if you are in a conversation, do you speak in order to provide factual information? Or do you speak based on your current emotional state and to effect the emotional state of others? Why would we expect HN to be any different?
Nyah. That proposed rule -- if you could somehow miraculously define it with the precision required -- wouldn't give you the results you desire.
Obviously if the discussion on these threads is purely political then they probably shouldn't have a place here.
That said, if the target market is just 'hackers', just modify my question to refer to 'hackers' rather than 'founders'.
Start up and hacking are emotive subjects.
Have you ever seen a typical political debate? Those are driven by emotion. They're full of catchphrases and insults, and nothing of merit.
The comments should count as much as the articles do in determining if a particular topic is allowed on HN or not. Because the comments are just as important. To me, at least.
A big part of why I first started reading HN is the the comments in the articles. I could find the articles in half a dozen other places. Still can. But, the comments here aren't usually anywhere else.
And the best comments are typically better than the article itself. If the comments turn political and into people arguing politics with one another, thats not interesting to me anymore. I don't usually find the article being commented on to be very good, and the comments are even worse.
Seeing people argue politics just makes me close HN and find something else to use to kill the next few minutes. I've actually avoided reading articles that I likely would have otherwise found interesting just to avoid seeing the vitriolic comments that inevitably follow.
I think that if you look at the resulting conversations on those sorts of articles, it usually retreads extremely familiar territory.
Also, 90% of that kind of article I've ever seen tends to be someone "broadcasting" a view they agree with ( "hey, this guy's right on!" ) rather than presenting actual new research in economics.
Also, any article like that tends to be something anyone can have an opinion on, tending to attract people that are more interested in those sorts of discussions than about "hacker news".
IMO, at least.
One can disagree without being snarky and disagreeable.
Besides, I don't agree with the notion that mean-spirited or dumb comments or ideology-based downvoting/upvoting are limited to politics and current events. Any thread about iOS, Android, Microsoft etc. is also likely generate a lot of those comments and ideology-based up/down voting :)
Aren't founders as busy as they are in part because they hope to reach the top 1 percent of income in their country? I would want to know what my country's policies are toward high-income people, and what social trends are influencing those policies, if I were pursuing a high-wealth business result, as at least some founders are.
I find myself wishing I had a 'meh' flag for both your comment and my reply. Not quite a downvote or a report, but... "meh... this is not a useful addition to the conversation."
Problems in politics have led to startups like Votizen and OpenCongress.
Where there is a problem there is a startup. And where there is a problem that people are willing to pay money for a solution there is a business model.
We're getting politics, in short, even if by a different name.
Eliminating the exciting news of the moment would make the site less entertaining for those not seeking intellectual stimulation. It would also make the site less popular. Both are good.
A ban would logically include YC company launches - revealing the conflict between YC's business interest and intellectual interest. It would be a defining moment, for what HN is.
"Startup news" could be a sister site, if important.
maybe ensuring the articles are at least a week old, that instantly removes 99% of the current events which are generally irrelevant and if it is relevant it will still be so in a week.
You might want to consider just shutting it down for 2 months, the great users will likely come back. It will definitely lower the dunbar number quite a bit.
The when these submissions popup all you need is someone to tag them as one of these things. You could either assign people to do this or weight it by karma or something.
Past political essays, e.g. by Cicero, will generally be intellectually interesting.
Hang out on the front page more and vote there, like RiderOfGiraffes mentioned in his farewell post (or the ensuing discussion, can't remember). It is really important that if you are dissatisfied with the quality of HN (as I currently am) you should do something about it.
If readers are willing to tag stories not just as "good" or "bad" but with categorical labels, then suddenly the news aggregator "knows" a lot more about the data its serving up. You could have categories at the top, preferential sorting for users, and more.
Note this discussion is exactly akin to deletionism on wikipedia – if we can categorise information effectively, why reject any of it?
. Econophysics, fuzzy logic, systems theory -- are those really serious fields? Could they become serious? The answers are subjective.
. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning -- too specific? is this just a journal that someone started to enhance her reputation in a self-defined field? how long has it been around and how long will it be around?
. Douglas Hofstadter -- scholar or dilletante?
. the blog of Terence Tao -- it is serious but is not published in a journal
. http://arxiv.org/find/math/1/au:+Jormakka_J/0/1/0/all/0/1 -- a guy who claimed to solve more than one Millennium Problem and is widely considered a crank. Articles were published in journals.
. http://arxiv.org/find/math/1/au:+Perelman_G/0/1/0/all/0/1 -- a guy who did solve a Millennium Problem. Articles were not published in journals.
Listen to Frank Wilczek talk about his feelings about not having his genius recognised: http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/Science/Physics/The-Univ... (Q&A at the end).
Academics play the karma game with much higher stakes.