zlacker

The guidelines of HN, to be kind and curious in the comments, are difficult to follow in this case. Outrage doesn't bring anything either, but a polite and curious discussion is impossible. The lack of reflection in the western world on this issue is seriously disturbing.

>>locall+(OP)
I hear you and I agree that there are topics which conventional politeness cannot respond to adequately, and that this is one of those topics.

If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.

How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're right that it's difficult.

From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.

>>dang+K
[flagged]

>>TheGuy+71
I don't agree that it's off topic, nor that HN would be better if we suppressed it and acted like this isn't happening. We're trying for a global optimum*, and the most important part of that is not to settle for local optima, such as not discussing difficult things.

I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: >>44403458 .

* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

>>dang+K
Thanks. I was not critical, especially not of the moderation, just tried to sum up what I think about it, and other than meaningless outrage there was nothing there. And yet there is no point in that because that's just letting off steam. I don't think it should be removed either.

>>dang+K
[flagged]

>>implem+Fn
I'm mostly just seeing people discuss what Israel's military is doing, with people on both sides adding historical context. It's sure as hell not a "hate-fest."

>>Capric+Mv
[flagged]

>>implem+TB
Their nonsense is already flag'd and dead'd, you'd need to enable showdead in your profile to see their posts.

>>dang+e1
If you're really intent on fostering higher quality, honest discussion maybe don't just make exceptions for the the post about Israeli mistakes which they actually investigate.

There are reasonable discussions to be had, but the submissions which might catalyze them are quickly flagged (as opposed to defended, like this one).

Examples:

>>44409805

>>44409708

If you're going to defend how this inflammatory post is some kind of exception to your policies, you're going to have to do a better job.