zlacker

There are enough places where these topics can be discussed. I come to HN because it is sort of a sanctuary from the madness of other social media sites.

You seem to think that the civil discussion that occurs here would carry over to these hot button topics, but I assure you that the kind of people who enjoy dragging a discussion down into the mud and participating in “flame wars” as you said will be attracted here once they know there is a discussion about one of their favorite issues.

In short, the curation of HN is what makes it great. Relaxing it would ruin this place.

>>bsuvc+(OP)
Amen.

>>bsuvc+(OP)
HN still suffers from group-think censorship though.

There are quite a lot of members here who will flag any reply to them as they don't agree or simply don't like what they are reading.

Power abuse is just a casualty of cleaner boards.

>>seoulm+ab
What makes it groupthink rather than simply being in agreement about something?

>>babygo+Ai
That it's a conversation between two people, one being new to the forum and the other being a long time user, both being experienced in their fields and having valid points.

I wish it were just agreements, sadly it's not.

>>bsuvc+(OP)
Thanks very much for your response. Just one thing I wanted to comment on was your opening sentence, "There are enough places where these topics can be discussed." I don't really agree with that.

The reason I asked my question in the first place was specifically because wherever else these topics are discussed, they are even exponentially more of a shit show than when they are discussed on HN. I wanted to see if there were any suggestions on getting HN-quality debate, but on more sensitive topics.

And the general consensus from responses is, basically, "no". And that consensus actually made me arrive at a fundamental conclusion I think: That it is indeed impossible to have a respectful debate on sensitive topics if commenting is pseudo-anonymous and open-ended.

Thus, I guess it may sound dumb, but it just clicked for me that it actually makes a lot of sense. It's difficult enough having discussions about sensitive topics when done in a face-to-face manner with people that have mutual trust - why should we think it's possible to have these conversations with faceless strangers on the Internet without it turning into a cesspool?

>>bsuvc+(OP)
Maybe one way around that would to be only allow users that with accounts created X+ months ago (and in good standing) to comment on those type of threads?

>>bsuvc+(OP)
>In short, the curation of HN is what makes it great. Relaxing it would ruin this place.

I feel like the opposite. This 'curation' creates and harbours one sided conversations at best and what's the point? 1 sided conversations are not conversations, you are playing tennis with a wall. The wall will always win.

>>sleepy+Om1
Can you give links to some one-sided conversations? I don't see many of those.

>>dang+HA2
>Can you give links to some one-sided conversations? I don't see many of those.

The first and most obvious topics are going to be the more controversial topics.

So look at climate change, covid/vaccines, US politics especially anything pro-trump or election fraud, and well anything touching on religion.

Here is today's climate change article, right on time.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29546875

Haven't quite read it yet but I'd bet there's only 1 side talking there.