zlacker

My guess is that the answer will be "not on HN" but I'm curious where such questions could be discussed/debated as well. I get banning flame-bait questions so that the forum/website doesn't become know as the Hackers' Fight Club. Maybe a clone/similar kind of site -- perhaps called HackersFightClub.com? -- could be created where topics that are NOT flame-bait get flagged and removed.

>>mikece+(OP)
I guess the corollary to my question is whether there is a way to have discussion of these sensitive topics without it turning into Hacker's Fight Club. For example, perhaps instead of a single "flag" option, having something like a "quarantine" option (a horrible and incorrect name I know) that had more restrictions on comments, perhaps:

1. A higher bar for comments based on age of account and karma.

2. A limit on the number of comments from any individual account, e.g. each account would only get one or two comments. The idea being "get out your point as clearly as possible in one message", because you won't have the option for endless back-and-forth (and potentially escalating) debate.

>>hn_thr+n2
I've always thought there should be better filters on here, for example I don't think answers with many up and down votes should be censored but I think there should be a filter for that if you don't want it. i.e. dead posts shouldn't be quite as extremely dead as they currently are.

To be fair the corollary is that you already know what you are getting from this place so probably sticking to purer tech topics on a tech accelerator's forum is fair enough. Interesting the these things overlap of course as I suspect will become ever more common.

>>hn_thr+n2
Eg: Hackers' Oxford Debate Club, complete with following the rules of respectful debate?

>>hn_thr+n2
> whether there is a way to have discussion of these sensitive topics without it turning into Hacker's Fight Club

Watching any post that touches on Covid over the past year and a half -- which should at least have aspects that are not inflammatory, unlike your examples -- I've become convinced that the answer is simply "no". It may be better here than other places, but it still isn't good. And it's not what I come here for. I don't engage with them anymore and I would prefer a world where they weren't submitted here at all.

>>hn_thr+n2
I would love to see this higher bar for throwaway accounts on topics like CCP and other geopolitical discussion where there is a strong incentive for organized brigading & propaganda.

But I've also personally used a couple new separate accounts to comment my experience & knowledge on topics that I wouldn't want to be google able to myself, even if I share that with my IRL friends.

Maybe there could be an option for 'private post' that you can still use your main account so mods can still look at coordination across accounts etc but the public facing handle is not tied to your public profile.

Probably would still encourage the type of comments most in this thread are against though that's a hard problem.

>>andy_p+Z3
> dead posts shouldn't be quite as extremely dead as they currently are.

You may already know this, but you can turn showdead on in your profile, which lets you see dead posts easily.

I will say that 95+% of the time the dead comments I see have earned their status, but I could see a case for decreasing the grayness for downvoted comments or making it a configurable option.