zlacker

The problem with that is that it's hard to say exactly what counts as politics. E.g. is an article about economic inequality like this one

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.

>>pg+(OP)
It's interesting, but is it useful for a busy founder?

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?

>>kwis+w
Not sure what 'founders' and 'CEOs' have to do with hacker news.

>>kwis+w
I think political stories and economic trends that relate to startups would also be appropriate (for example startup visas, growth of middle-class in China) as these are area that impact startups in the long term.

Obviously if the discussion on these threads is purely political then they probably shouldn't have a place here.

>>kwis+w
I don't see a guideline saying something has to be useful or forwardable among CEOs.

>>mgkims+M
I assumed that the target market for HN is people in startups and people about to start startups.

That said, if the target market is just 'hackers', just modify my question to refer to 'hackers' rather than 'founders'.

>>kwis+f1
HN is for hackers, not startup founders. There just ends up being a disproportionate amount of stuff about startups, because YC is in the startup business.

>>pg+(OP)
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.

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.

>>pg+(OP)
> Economic inequality is a very interesting social phenomenon, though it is often written about in a heated/political way.

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.

>>mkr-hn+d1
I'll go ahead and suggest, since it's on topic in this thread, that passive aggressive snark like this is one source of HN's decline.

One can disagree without being snarky and disagreeable.

>>pg+(OP)
I don't actually think articles on "Economic inequality" belong on hacker news. In fact, it's articles like that which are a big difference between this site in the early days and now. I'd prefer a site that stuck to technical and startup business topics but perhaps that isn't hacker news anymore. The fact that these articles get voted up implies that I must be in the minority.

>>pg+(OP)
imo the "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" guideline and related submissions add a lot of value to HN.

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 :)

>>kwis+q2
How was it passive aggressive or snarky?

>>kwis+w
It's interesting, but is it useful for a busy founder?

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.

>>pg+(OP)
Require articles about (say) economic inequality to be scholarly.

>>pg+v1
Clearly not everybody reads the site guidelines. Perhaps enforcing that periodically would help.

>>pg+v1
And therein lies the problem. As HN and Y Combinator itself have grown, as well as the general startup climate, HN has become increasingly startup focused to the point where many would describe it as "for startup founders" rather than "for hackers". And there are a lot of new users who like it that way (or assume it's supposed to be that way). But then you have the old guard like tptacek who would like nothing more than to see HN filled with only hard tech/science posts. That's a gap that isn't going to be filled with any algorithmic tweak or new comment layout.

>>ssclaf+O3
I would strongly prefer an HN that only had startup posts. I think this part of the thread is going off the rails, though. The problem is, "how do you improve comment quality on HN". We can probably avoid debating the premise of the question, and just focus on the (plentiful) ideas themselves.

>>mkr-hn+L2
Perhaps it was intended as a non-snarky, non-aggressive statement, but I still have trouble reading it as anything other than passive-aggressive snark, especially given the context of the conversation.

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."

>>pg+(OP)
I would also add that topics about problems with possible software solutions are also relevant.

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.

>>kwis+f5
The downvote button is the "meh" flag! Why would you hesitate before downvoting such a comment? Slay evil instantly!

>>pg+(OP)
I would say: yes, that's definitely politics, and it should definitely be banned. I'd be prepared to use a fairly broad brush in determining what "politics" is.

>>mgkims+M
Hey, when I joined it was called "Startup News".

>>pg+(OP)
What about adding a separate "flag as politics" option to stories? That way, if enough people feel that it is off-topic for the HN front page, it could get banished to a separate news.ycombinator.com/politics area. Not deleted, just removed from the front page and easily accessible to anyone who wants it.

>>pg+(OP)
Facebook / Twitter analysis, if it has 10,000 shares on Facebook/Twitter chances are we can find it somewhere else. Would any of us have missed that Color raised $41 million dollars? Probably not.

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.

>>wvenab+s2
We could have choice, would have to be in conjunction with either a tagging system or a completely separate list like subreddits. With tagging in your profile you could have things to opt out of like politics and current events and tech gossip.

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.

>>pg+(OP)
Just a ban on "current events" (aka news)?

Past political essays, e.g. by Cicero, will generally be intellectually interesting.

>>wvenab+s2
Technically it just means you're in the minority of people who upvote things.

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.

>>tptace+43
tptacek, it would be great to require everything on HN to be "scholarly" or sufficiently serious, no? But the question is how to do that.

>>gcv+Ld
I really like your suggestion. It could be extended even further.

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.

>>mgkims+M
This tiff seems to highlight what's perhaps the problem: is there really agreement & understanding on what HN is supposed to be about?

>>crassh+7l
I came here to say this and can't believe I had to scroll down so far. All you need are accurate tags and a way to filter by them. There is no point punishing people for submitting or voting up something the community is not interested in. Just make sure they tag it correctly so that it can be found or ignored according to reader's preference.

Note this discussion is exactly akin to deletionism on wikipedia – if we can categorise information effectively, why reject any of it?

>>crassh+Rk
Simple; they would need to be published in journals, or have bibliographies, or have a cite record. "Scholarly" isn't really a subjective term.

>>tptace+nE
I believe scholarliness is not simple. Examples that muck up a naive attempt at defining "scholarly":

. 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.