
Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet? - ar0
Is there a place on the Internet for general -- including political and economic -- discussion that is filled with civil, insightful commentary?<p>Outside of specialist corners (such as HN), the Internet often appears to be filled primarily with hateful repetition of populist punchlines, providing little to no insight into the big topics that concern the world at the moment. This is such a shame, as the Internet really should be the enabler of discussion across borders and societies (which of course can become heated but should always be respectful and rooted in trying to understand each other!).<p>From what I have read, The WELL seems to have been such a place (or still is?) in the &quot;old days&quot;, but where do you go today for such an exchange of ideas on a variety of topics?<p>(Note: It is allowed to cost money.)
======
TeMPOraL
I mostly stay here. The amount of political and economic discussion here is
what I personally consider enough in my life; I don't think looking for more
sources would improve SNR for me.

I sometimes like to peruse Reddit for some well-defined topics - the trick is
to find an appropriate subreddit for it. So, for instance, when I want to
follow SpaceX news, I'll tune in to /r/spacex, because quite a lot of people
there are aerospace engineers (and some are SpaceX employees), so you can
expect detailed, up-to-date and to-the-point news.

My general observation is that the more specialized a community is, and the
further it is from ego-involving topics (politics, economy, religion), the
more civil the discussions are there. So I'd focus on finding many specialized
discussion places instead of one general.

~~~
eevilspock
The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon
Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically
amoral. The civility here is often arrived at by burying comments that
challenge this self-serving slant. Or by an algorithm that systematically
buries articles and users (whose accounts accrue ranking penalties) that
generate any heated debate by challenging the slant. We're not talking trolls.

Check out the top comment under _SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the
pain, struggle, despair of homeless’_. It was at least generating some good
debate, but HN decided to flag and bury it.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11125896](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11125896)

See the dominant and buried comments for _272 Slaves Were Sold to Save
Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?_ :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11512830](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11512830)

Why was _Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems_ flagged
to death?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12304414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12304414)

Hell, even this post has been quickly taken off the front page despite having
better numbers (70 votes in the last hour) than many items that are there now.

Politics and economics points of view are heavily filtered here. Rarely if
ever does a challenge to the status quo make the front page. If one does it is
then killed, ironically, for inspiring debate!

~~~
eevilspock
Silent downvotes right on schedule!

I think civil and _honest_ discussion would be better served without the
anonymous down-votes. One can still retain privacy with a pseudonym.

I find it ironic that Hacker News is not Hackable! The most important thing
about HN, its ranking algorithm and reputation system (karma), is closed and
not hackable in any way. I know HN wishes it could come up with a better
algorithm, and even pg wrote about the need and how HN will need to evolve (I
can't find that post of his right now). What better way to come up with a
better way than to let its userbase of hackers hack away at it? If the API
exposed votes, there would be a blossoming of alternate front pages and
comment rankings.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I think it would be solved by requiring a comment with each downvote. The
motivations for an upvote are obvious but a downvote should have to explain
why, even if it something as simple as "citation needed" or "factually
incorrect, here's why."

I often get the sense that anonymous and unexplained downvotes carry a sense
of "this post is so obviously wrong it defies the need for explanation," which
means that nobody learns anything from the exchange.

EDIT: I got downvoted for this comment and I have no idea why

~~~
eevilspock
That would result in too many redundant comments. Many people will down-vote
for exactly the same reason.

Though I do wish HN could distinguish between "I subjectively don't like or
disagree with your point" and "Your logic is objectively flawed or rests on
false data".

~~~
smsm42
> I do wish HN could distinguish between "I subjectively don't like or
> disagree with your point" and "Your logic is objectively flawed or rests on
> false data".

I would like having strong AI driving HN too. Because humans are very bad at
distinguishing those two and confuse them all the time. Once we invent the AI
that allows people to separate them I'd be all for using it here on HN.

------
dredmorbius
So, funny thing, but I was just going through dang and sctb's comment
histories to get a stronger sense of what makes HN tick. Despite (or because
of) limited features, with strong guidance from the top (Guidelines, Paul
Graham's "How to Disagree"), and a community that's evolved over the course of
about a decade, the discourse here is pretty good. Not perfect, but the
curation and commentary are usually informative, occasionally excellent.
Topical breadth is limited, and there's no categorisation of posts, but what
is covered is pretty good.

I'm contrasting that with Imzy, advertised as a "kinder, gentler Reddit", but
which in my experience has been among the more vile, toxic, abrasive, and
hateful hellholes on the Internet. I'm not a connoiseur of such spaces -- /b/,
4chan, and the like -- but I've seen what does work.

This set of guidelines from Google+ (unofficial AFAIU) are also useful.
Communities with similar tools and principles tend to do better:

[https://plus.google.com/+JohnSkeats/posts/F86Hv3L6kE3](https://plus.google.com/+JohnSkeats/posts/F86Hv3L6kE3)

In a series of investigations trying to assess the size, scope, and vitality
of discussion at G+, I hit on the model of searching for names of significant
authors or other authorities as a proxy for meaningful discussion. _Foreign
Policy_ has a list of "Global 100 Thinkers" published annually which provides
a pretty broad-based, multi-ideology, and current basis for finding same, and
a set of Google searches (looking at site match totals) along with an
arbitrarily selected string to indicate potential conversations _not_ of
interest ("Kim Kardashian"), gives an FP:KK index.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/)

As earlier comments have noted, Metafilter has a staggeringly high FP:KK
index, though low overall traffic. Reddit is also quite high, and blogs, most
particularly Wordpress.com, perform quite well.

This is the sort of tracking I'd like to do over time and across more sites --
it would be particularly useful to have a web search which would simply return
the top _n_ domains and hit counts rather than having to parse results and
insert search delays (about 45-60s seems to be sufficient) to avoid Captcha
prompts.

Conversely, you could find some good search tokens for topics of interest and
see where results tend to pop up.

Looking at the detailed results (which I've not posted, the tables simply
become too large for convenient presentation), some pretty clear patterns of
distribution across both sites and identifiers turn up. Richard Dawkins and
Pope Benedict, for example, were both highly popular, though on different
sites.

There's a huge amount of public Web activity at several private educational
institutions, in particular Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cornell University,
University of Michigan, and Johns Hopkins. By comparison, the University of
California system, which I'd have expected to be more significantly
represented, is tiny. European educational institutions are also sadly
anaemic, with largely UK schools represented, also Maastricht and Unibo
(Italy).

I did a follow-up search through major Libertarian organisations which was
pretty disappointing. Having discovered virtually all are part of the Atlas
Network might improve my search space a bit, and might make an interesting
follow-up.

I've also become fairly convinced that good conversation scales poorly. I'm
experimenting with a set of smallish groups, probably ~30 - 300 people, though
that remains to be seen via empirical results. These are "knitting societies"
in an effort to both be un-cool ("cool" and "good discussion" seem inversely
related), and in the sense that these might be societies that knit together,
both internally and externally. We're somewhat looking for a good home. (Imzy
had been on the candidate list. It's no longer.)

The other option is to seek out the specific people you're interested in
discussing things with. I've been taking to simply emailing people directly
with either questions or information I'm hoping will be of interest. I got a
response yesterday (after a week or two) from a Famous Authority in an Area of
Interest who not only appreciated the obscure detain and evidence I'd turned
up but invited more. Not bad for a space alien cat / 1950s sci-fi character.

The signal's out there, but you've got to hunt for it, and it is _very_ easily
scared off.

------
rubidium
Let me answer a different question: where do you go for civil, insightful
commentary?

I recommend gathering a group of "morning cup of coffee" people with an
intellectual bent. This works particularly well among more academic
neighborhoods, but can be done elsewhere.

Get 3-10 people you know (or get to know these people) that are generally
aware of the world, from different walks of life/professions, and start
meeting a few days a week at a local coffee shop. Ensure the shop has a copy
of better publications across the political spectrum. Talk shop. Talk the
world. Talk whatever.

The internet is good at information. It limps quite a bit when asked to do
conversation.

~~~
DeathArrow
You mean he should get out of his house? Isn't it dangerous?

~~~
lj3
Not necessarily. There's a growing trend of finding "mastermind" groups to
have group skype chats with once or twice a week. They're great because you're
not limited by geography. They're terrible because even the most antisocial
introvert needs some human contact. :)

------
forgottenpass
I find this area to be best filled by blogs. The format allows long ideas to
be explored in a way no "social" site can. The comments sections are better at
being on-topic, because there are less people stumbling in from another corner
of a generalist platform. Or comments are disabled, and if you want to
participate in a back-and-forth, you need to start your own blog and have
something worthwhile to say. Barrier to entry helps with signal to noise
ratio. The youtube comments are widely regarded as worthless, but bad video
essays on youtube don't make people give up on watching video essays in
general.

There is a lot of legwork in finding and following good blogs or aggregators.
But if you're seeking out ideas (or "insightful commentary"), you can't avoid
doing the legwork. Stopping in one place limits you to the scope of ideas
found in that place.

HN and (some) subreddits are certainly good starting points, but the content
eventually become predictable, trite and cliche. Even here. (especially here?)
The collective conscious of any one community amasses new ideas slower than
someone seeking them out can consume them. And that's the best case scenario,
it doesn't even account for for topics that have devolved into an echo
chamber, or constant flamewars on certain topics. You have to constantly keep
moving.

Note: When I say blogs, I mean blogs. Not some hackneyed news-blog that will
feed your mind poison just to keep you coming back. The Gawker properties were
a FOX News for a younger, lefter crowd and it drove me up the wall when people
didn't recognize that.

~~~
monk_e_boy
I found this leads me into a bubble of internet that only shows me what I
agree with. I've found myself going back to reddit just to get both sides of
the story. It's useful when say the Trump fans post things that lefties find
hard answering, those are the points that I find myself thinking about late at
night.

------
niftich
It's funny, because 4chan, especially it's topic-focused sub-boards, isn't
nearly as unfit for this as it might seem. Yes, the signal-to-noise ratio will
be low and it'd be generous to pretend the conversation will always be _civil_
, but there are some pluses:

\- No downvotes, so opposing viewpoints don't get suppressed

\- (Multi-)Reply support, so you can address your response to a specific post
or posts

\- Everyone already expects a low signal-to-noise ratio

\- Everyone comes expecting some amount of personal attacks, offensive
content, blatant trolling, and off-topic posts, so seasoned commenters aren't
driven off by this behavior

\- Default anonymity means no way to earn or lose reputation, so the only way
to judge a post is by its content

4chan has _plenty_ of downsides regardless and it won't appeal to everyone.
But compared to Youtube comments or the typical CNN comment section, there is
far less majority-moderation, far less intermingling of policy points and
personal attacks within the exact same post, and far less propensity for
people to respond to comments they deem off-topic or irrelevant.

~~~
ldjb
There is a common misconception that all of 4chan is like /b/, but you can
find some rather good quality discussions on some of the other boards. 4chan
covers a lot of niches, and for some of them it is one of the best places to
go to discuss them.

~~~
snerbles
/b/ also has some utility as a containment board - it's nowhere near perfect
at keeping shitposters away from other boards, but it is a decent magnet for
those that want to go crazy.

------
eloy
I'd say Reddit. There are some heavy moderated subreddits for insightful
discussions, like reddit.com/r/truereddit. Because Reddit has a voting system
like HN, quality content is being upvoted and shown as first.

If you search you can probably find some more subreddits with less general
content. And HN is of course a really great website for such discussions, with
a lot of highly intelligent people that post quite lenghty comments. HN is
probably my favorite website when it comes to discussions.

~~~
simonswords82
Reddit's greatest strength (the subreddit architecture) is also its greatest
weakness. Subs attract groups of likeminded individuals usually with a
particular interest, and as such a default tone and set of opinions are preset
within a sub before you arrive.

If you fail to understand what the preset rules of engagement and opinions are
you're going to have a bad time. Worse still, if you happen to disagree with
the general consensus of a sub your opinion will simply be downvoted and your
voice will not be heard. You're very unlikely to be educated by existing sub
members as to why your opinion is wrong with any real sense of perspective
because the hive mind has kicked in and you're not aligned with it.

The larger the sub, the more this problem is exacerbated as there are more
people ready and waiting to hit the downvote button. This means that you're
very unlikely to encounter a balanced and sensible (aka civil) discussion on
Reddit.

~~~
ScottBurson
Exacerbated.

~~~
simonswords82
It was a test to see if anybody read to the end. And thanks :)

------
basseq
HN - Discussion is generally civil, and snarky or underhanded commends are
generally downvoted swiftly. Not much in the way of political and economic
commentary, and the discussion tools (e.g., the platform, notification, etc.)
are just OK.

Quora - There are pockets of intelligent thought, but _discussion_ is limited
to an answer and maybe a couple comments. And there's a ton of noise and not
nearly enough moderation. But some of the content is _really_ good and the
Quora Weekly Digest remains one of the more interesting emails I get every
week.

Newsvine - I haven't been active here for years (since 2008-2009), but it used
to be a great community with good discussion and a strong focus on politics
and recent news. I think it's gone downhill.

I haven't waded into sub-Reddits yet. I really got out of arguing with random
people in the internet. I have better things to do with my time, and (echoing
the OP) most comment threads are filled with assholes and comments like: "Wow.
You must not have finished elementary school."

~~~
optimuspaul
Oh man, I had thought that Quora was a decent place but quickly found that
it's full of the worst of the internet. I had answered some things and made
some comments on answers and was quickly attacked for expressing constructive
criticism. I think that it wasn't so much that people are negative but that
they have come to expect vitriol from everyone on the internet that they were
very defensive and in some cases offensive. I found it impossible to have
reasoned discussion with people there. I really liked the format and the idea
behind it, but unfortunately the internet seems to be broken. I do enjoy the
weekly emails from Quora though, I just can't participate.

I also can't do reddit, partially because of it's negative reputation, but
also I just don't have the energy to deal with it's terrible UX and having the
wade through the crap to find the gold.

------
gunn
I've been wondering: would it be practical to build a reddit/HN like system
where the comments you see are by authors you've upvoted before, or authors
they've upvoted before?

This way everyone can comment, and the low effort jokes etc. can still exist
but you personally only see them if that's what you enjoy.

Currently we give every comment a single universal score. It's hard to come up
with a simple set of rules that encourage useful participation long-term, but
this system would highlight the insightful stuff through the noise.

~~~
creshal
> I've been wondering: would it be practical to build a reddit/HN like system
> where the comments you see are by authors you've upvoted before, or authors
> they've upvoted before?

Only showing upvoted authors would only reinforce your personal echo chamber,
see also: Tumblr.

Only showing downvoted authors would, going by my Reddit voting statistic,
expose me to 95% dick jokes and 5% authors that have valid points I disagree
with (mostly on such disgustingly controversial topics like "Lenovo makes
better Thinkpad laptops than IBM did").

> Currently we give every comment a single universal score. It's hard to come
> up with a simple set of rules that encourage useful participation long-term,
> but this system would highlight the insightful stuff through the noise.

/. tried it, did it ever work out? (Honestly no idea, I've never been deep
enough involved in it.)

~~~
gunn
> Only showing upvoted authors would only reinforce your personal echo
> chamber, see also: Tumblr.

Certainly, if you just upvote left-wing and downvote right-wing or vice versa.
But if you want to see something better you can get it by upvoting those
authors that have valid points you disagree with too.

I think currently some amount of upvoting happens because people want to
amplify views they agree with even if they don't provide new insight. In the
system I'm proposing, this incentive is gone because your votes affect what
you see more of in the future, not what other people do.

~~~
creshal
I'm still unconvinced, most people still self-filter, consciously or not. You
already have this filter mechanism right now, in a coarser form, by picking
the subreddits, twitter accounts, … you follow – and those you respond to.

How'd you get the _initial_ exposure to high-quality content you disagree
with? HN is the only site where I run across right-wing content that
(occasionally) isn't utter garbage, and even here you have the whole community
pre-filtered for people who accept HN's comparatively heavy-handed
moderation/censorship approach.

~~~
pjc50
> high-quality content you disagree with

I think we need to unpack this a lot more in order to work out what it might
possibly look like. I mean, if it were truly high-quality wouldn't it _change_
your view so that you agree with it? That's a gross oversimplification of
course, but there is a real problem in that people's politics tends to proceed
from their values, and there's a very fine line between being "challenged" and
being grossly offended. Could a "high-quality" argument for genocide exist, or
is that the sort of thing that should be vetoed because it's an unacceptable
conclusion no matter what the logic?

The only way to have a discussion with people with extremely different views
is to go back and find out what points of moral convergence you do have. Or
from what background people have developed their views. This is time-
consuming, personal and doesn't scale, because it depends on digging to the
individual privilege or trauma that embeds people's strongest views.

The middle ground is probably something like the Economist, where I'm to the
left of it but it's sufficient quality that that doesn't matter. They also
avoid advocating for truly stupid things for tribal reasons, which causes most
of the left/right noise problem.

------
just_observing
[http://metafilter.com](http://metafilter.com)

~~~
lsiebert
Yeah, I don't consider moderation censorship. There are plenty of places to go
for unmoderated conversations, but they are rarely civil. On Metafilter, abuse
and insults aren't tolerated.

------
NikolaeVarius
From what I've seen, any place that claims to be "civil" also tends to be the
most closed minded communities, especially ones that have upvote downvote
systems.

Unless you happen to agree with the specific set of ideas that a majority of
that community happens to agree with, your contribution is meaningless

~~~
godshatter
"Civil" seems to equate with "filtered via down votes". I would prefer seeing
just the number of up votes and the number of down votes which gives it a
"popularity ranking" of a sort. I can then make a determination for myself if
I want to read it or not. Lots of up votes, few down votes? Probably speaks to
the majority opinion. Lots of down votes and few up votes? Could either be a
shit post or one that goes against the grain. Two seconds of reading will tell
me which. Lots of down and up votes? Probably a comment I should read, even if
I'm just skimming.

I don't need the community to filter for me, I'd rather just get more
information in order to choose what to read. But then I usually read any forum
in as raw a format as they allow.

------
pjc50
Metafilter is great, partly due to the $5 posting account cost. I've lurked
there for years and not posted.

CrookedTimber is the last of the oldschool blogs-with-comment-sections that I
follow for this purpose, although it has some serious problem posters.

HN isn't really politically or economically focused so you kind of have to
slip under the radar.

~~~
barrkel
Metafilter is a borderline groupthink echo chamber, so heavy is the
moderation. It's best for purely factual stuff. Stray into opinion stuff, and
it's really narrow and slanted.

~~~
Tomte
I'd call it "toxic", from the one and only discussion I participated in.

Sure, probably an outlier. Bad luck. But I still hate thinking back to that
experience, and I survived Usenet flamewars just fine.

~~~
deepspace
No, not an outlier. Metafilter used to be great, but it has definitely
deteriorated into a toxic echo chamber. Opinions that do not fit in with the
groupthink are not tolerated there.

------
Brendinooo
Some of the Stack Exchanges do well here. It's not 'discussion' in a free-form
sense, but in general I've found the focus of each SX and the Q-and-A format
to provide a good way to talk about topics without going off the rails.

------
walterbell
There are insightful comments on almost every site with UGC, even if said
comments are a minority. We need a client-side aggregator of
whitelisted/upvoted comments, to "follow" pseudonyms and merge comments and
context from many sites. Alternately, there could be communities which
curate/whitelist comments from multiple sites, then readers could "follow" a
feed of curated comments. RSS was a step in this direction.

Any site which achieves economic infuence via discussion quality/quantity will
eventually attract paid posters of various stripes, ranging from sophisticated
misdirection to uncivil discourse. Whitelists can reduce the cost of filtering
this noise, but sufficiently good propaganda can best be detected by readers
who co-evolve with paid influencers: _"... elite consultants have adopted
grassroots advocacy tactics for paying clients. Rather than being dismissed as
mere 'astroturf', these consultants' campaigns should be seen as having real
effects on political participation and policymaking"_,
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IO0E69E/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IO0E69E/)

    
    
      Manually curated Twitter lists, viewed on Flipboard
      Private groups on Facebook
      Niche/subscription blog comments
      Amazon book reviews & comments (niche books)
      HN comments/stories from whitelisted users
      NY Times comments (quality varies by article topic)

------
sergiotapia
Almost all of the popular communities online lean left, take your pick.

You have much slimmer pickings if you're a conservative.
[http://gab.ai](http://gab.ai) recently launched as a pro free-speech twitter
alternative, I would also check them out.

~~~
hood_syntax
> You have much slimmer pickings if you're a conservative

IMO, it doesn't matter if the platform leans left as long as it fosters
constructive and open discussion. You're correct that a lot of the heavy
handed moderation (censorship?) is on popular communities that trend left, but
that's just a money related trend imo. Companies want to make their product a
"safe" platform for investors

~~~
creshal
Throwing rights under the bus in the pursuit of money is now leftist?

I hope we have Karl Marx' corpse wired up to a generator.

~~~
hood_syntax
> Throwing rights under the bus in the pursuit of money is now leftist?

It's not that it's leftist. It's that the people online tend to lean
leftwards, and people investing in online communities want to grab the largest
portion of the available population.

I will say, however, that the left in the US (namely the Democratic party)
certainly seems to be willing to pursue a lot in the name of money (like
taking millions of dollars from corporate and financial lobbying), and a lot
of leftists online are totally okay with creating echochambers (though that's
certainly not their pursuit alone).

~~~
smsm42
I doubt however it goes that deep. I mean, your demographic premise is right,
but there is more than ample right (whatever you want to mean by that word,
really) online population. And I don't think anybody does a careful
calculation of whether we should get this slant or that slant based on how
many dollars it will bring us - even if it were possible (which I'm pretty
sure it's not) nobody does that in practice.

And, if you look at channels like Fox News, it has huge audience. Granted,
online audience is different, but in this time and place, it's not _that_
different. It's not 1990s anymore, using the internet is not for the elite
anymore, no more than having a cellphone. Everybody now does that (not
literally everybody but demographically pretty much all is covered).

So, why many online communities lean leftwards? I'd say because their
organizers/maintainers lean leftwards. Those are usually people that are
young, frequently college or early post-college age, frequently with
background in liberal arts - that demographics leans left. And those that
don't lean the same way don't feel comfortable there (and modern college left
made making people disagreeing with them feel unwelcome practically into a
competition sport) and leave. That'd happen and does happen with no money
consideration involved.

------
p333347
I use twitter and have a quick and snappy discussion in about a dozen
exchanges, many times with known people like journalists, columnists etc. Of
course, you must carefully choose who you interact with or follow. I find
engaging in discussion of such topics as politics and religion to be futile,
and economics is intertwined with politics. I only do it when I see something
intolerably incorrect or foolish and I just _have_ to engage with the fellow
(as in this [https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)).

On a cynical note (or realistic if you will), I don't think topics like
politics and religion can be discussed in a civil manner. If they are, then
those discussing are not getting to the meat of the matter because once you
get there, you are bound to hit a nerve or two and the civility facade comes
right off. Even IRL those who engage in civil debates are more careful about
appearing civil than actually debating effectively. The interwebs, with its
anonymity and all that, allows one to be much more freer in bringing out their
ugly side right of the bat (though sometimes it could be a persona adopted for
the kicks).

------
manish_gill
I'm trying to create a private slack community for this actually. It's just a
bunch of friends/trusted people who we know are smart, bring a new perspective
etc and have good things to contribute. It's been slow going creating a
community like that (high achieving, smart people who are usually too busy to
participate - So far we're just 20 people with like 10 the most active) but I
have hopes that some day it'll become good enough that I can open it up to the
public.

Things we usually discuss (and we have at least 1 person who is more
knowledgable/an insider so they can teach others and give context) - Tech,
Economics, Geopolitics, Culture, Cinema, Photography, BioTech/Energy etc. The
goal is _in depth_ discussions, not just water cooler commentary. But since
it's friends, it also becomes your usual facebook chat replacement
occasionally.

I know it's not the answer you're looking for (since it's actually
private/friends and their friends etc for now) but just thought I'd mention
this in the context. Trying to create and maintain a community has been an
interesting experience so far. :)

~~~
chetangoti
It is possible for me to join that community?

~~~
manish_gill
Sorry, it's just I'm trying to keep it among known people or people who are
vetted by people we know and trust (that also includes IRL identity etc). Like
I said, when I see momentum and people deriving tangible benefit from it, I'll
take it public! :-)

~~~
zepolen
The second you take it public, it will get destroyed.

It's the classic "I don't want to be in a club that wants me" vs "I want to be
in a club that doesn't want me"

~~~
krapp
AKA Eternal September. The quality of an online community is inversely
correlated with its popularity.

------
devinhelton
I spend most of my time in small, private, invite-only forums these days.

As I get older, the problem with most forums is not so much lack of civility,
but rather tediousness. Eventually, I have heard all the arguments, and if new
comers to the forum hash out the same arguments over-and-over again, then I
lose interest. Also I have found that the truth on a variety of issues is
extremely politically incorrect, and so you either get a choice between forums
that ban nearly all politically incorrect content or forums that are
unmoderated and allow any vulgar or spiteful content. Neither are appealing to
me.

I have been thinking of the of trying to start a forum for people who are very
intellectually curious and not easily triggered by politically incorrect
topics. Sign up here if you are interested, and you'll get an email if I
decide to go through with it --
[https://countersearch.net/forum](https://countersearch.net/forum)

------
a3n
Form your own private, by-invitation, undiscoverable group. Friends and
colleagues are the obvious place to start, and not too large.

I've belonged to one for almost 20 years. I think the group has varied between
10 and 20 people, a few have come and gone (and come back).

We use an email list, use whatever you like.

------
losteverything
If you are asking a place online that equates to in-person discussions, I
would say there isn't any.

As I told my kid when I showed him mosaic, the screen is not a human. Humans
have kindness and compassion. The screen is to get things. To some it is a way
to make a living. The screen can never be generous; that is learned at the
home.

Ann Landers and Dear Abby. Ever hear of them? Newspaper columnists who
answered readers questions. I always asked, " Why would anybody seek help or
advice from a newspaper person? " Plus, you have never met them.

Why would I seek advice or opinion from a person I never met?

Google any ailment and the results are astounding. Ask your mom or dad if it
is something to worry about and you are likely to get a trusted answer

~~~
thex10
> As I told my kid when I showed him mosaic, the screen is not a human. Humans
> have kindness and compassion. The screen is to get things. To some it is a
> way to make a living. The screen can never be generous; that is learned at
> the home.

I really like this, thank you for sharing.

As for getting advice on the Internet - there are many quandaries about which
one might rather ask the Internet than a person they've met for a variety of
reasons.

* They don't know anyone with expertise in $THING

* You want a more objective opinion (who better than someone you don't know?)

* Asking someone they know is likely to create bad consequences (makes them worry! makes them judge you! makes them retaliate! makes them jump to a crazy conclusion and attack someone else! makes them report you to $AGENCY)

------
asher
One aspect we shouldn't overlook is stratification by intelligence. People of
very different IQs have trouble communicating. So, "hateful repetition of
populist punchlines" is a natural form of communication for average-
intelligence people - to say nothing of below-average.

Now, the loudest, most visible fraction of any political group tends to be the
stupid.

So your conversational Utopia needs some kind of poll-test at the entrance.

I think that an educated gentleman of 150 years ago wouldn't be annoyed at the
ignorant opinions of a servant, because they were of two different worlds.
Today with the spread of literacy and erosion of class distinction, these
different levels of discourse are forced together.

------
whamlastxmas
Something Awful, D&D forum. Maybe not insightful but at least civil. $10
accounts mean being a shithead has consequences.

~~~
FT_intern
by D&D do you mean dungeons and dragons?

~~~
whamlastxmas
debate/discussion

~~~
selimthegrim
They did rename it AD&D: Advanced Debate and Discussion in one of their April
Fool's binges a while back.

------
uhote
Definitely [https://8ch.net/pol/](https://8ch.net/pol/). I have seen a lot of
insightful discussion about politics there.

~~~
Karunamon
Insightful maybe, but the ironic (and I'm not sure to what degree)
antisemitism, nazi veneration, and apparent lust for the end of the world gets
old quick.

I'd kill for a /pol/ that bans low effort posting like that.

------
some-guy
It definitely leans center-left but I've found /r/PoliticalDiscussion to be a
good subreddit for (mostly US-based) political topics.

------
known
Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their
illusions destroyed.

------
zelon88
I frequent several private FB groups that cover a wide range of topics. Like
technology, politics, and cars. I find that if you seek out specific groups of
enthusiastic people who share your passions (but not neccesarily your
perspective) the discussion is usually more insightful and respectful. You
basically need to get off of main street and step into a little coffee shop to
hear the gossip behind the gossip. Where else would these populist punchlines
be coming from if not from passionate groups of people who actually put
thought into things and talk about them.

~~~
joe_the_user
Yeah,

On FB, there can be groups that are entirely uncivil and groups that are
fairly - it depends on who sets them up and for what purpose, it doesn't
necessarily depend on the subject matter.

------
CompelTechnic
bogleheads.org is a forum for the discussion of conservative investing
approaches, but it ends up tying into proactive and insightful discussions
about all sorts of lifestyle issues. I enjoy it a lot!

~~~
jackcosgrove
Bogleheads is self-contradictory in some ways. The Boglehead philosophy is to
buy and hold assets without frequent trading. And yet the discussions are
filled with financial noise. For a group of simple buy-and-holders, they like
to micromanage (at least with words on the web) minute financial decisions.

A Boglehead thread should be something like this:

9/2/2016 Username said: I began regularly buying XYZ index fund.

9/2/2056 Username said: I began regularly drawing down XYZ index fund.

That's it. Instead they chinwag about tiny personal expenditures. I think a
forum is not the best medium for such a community, given that a forum
consisting of my model thread would be moribund.

There are some nuggets of financial wisdom, but for a lot of people there
being a Boglehead is just a slogan.

------
stoic
I have a recommendation, but you first need stairs in your house...

------
felipeccastro
I think it's easier to find such kind of comments on specialized communities,
i.e. where users have a common ground. For example, looking for insightful
comments on politics and economics, I usually like to follow the discussions
on the Mises Institute site - since there is a common ideology to most
visitors there (libertarianism), they don't spend time hating each other and
disagreeing on basic views, and can contribute with constructive arguments
instead.

------
wazoox
I've been using Google+ for that since the beta. If you remove all of the
"hot", "recommended for you" and similar torrents of stupid from your circles,
you can create a vast circle of people with whom you can discuss politics,
science and other things. My "politis" circle is a few hundred people, and a
few thousands follow my politics (rabid infrared leftist) collections.

------
DrNuke
One option is setting up a passive Twitter account to follow a handful of very
well reputed analysts in the fields you like. No friends, no general media, no
noise. Shameless plug as an example:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/NuclResearchNet](https://mobile.twitter.com/NuclResearchNet).

------
achariam
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I've partially given up on finding
a community. Instead I've decided to try and build it myself. There are some
really great ideas around community that I'd like to experiment with.

It's not quite ready yet (www.elyxel.com) but if anyone is interested feel
free to reach out.

------
PLenz
I've been posting on total.fark.com for over a decade at this point for a
certain definition of 'civil'.

------
thr0waway1239
I wonder if it is possible to automatically assign a "civility" score to
internet comment threads using natural language processing techniques.

Even if it works, I think this might reduce the signal along with the noise
:-) The most insightful commentary has at least a touch of rhetoric.

------
Grangar
HN...

~~~
mkaziz
HN is definitely the only place I've kept returning to long-term. It's
uniquely civil, even on topics that include triggers.

------
mettamage
Besides HN, a friend of mine created a Facebook group of friends where we have
those discussions.

------
nrjames
While gaming oriented, there's a great group of people who discuss pretty much
everything over at the Quarter to Three forums.
[https://forum.quartertothree.com/](https://forum.quartertothree.com/)

~~~
dclowd9901
Wow, I used to read Tom Chick's writings there a lifetime ago. Some of the
best video gaming centric writing I've ever seen.

------
yodsanklai
A little bit off-topic, but I've always wondered if there were academic
research on how to improve discussion forums. In addition to collective
moderation, could we use techniques like machine learning for a better ranking
of comments?

------
monk_e_boy
BBC Radio 4 is enough for me. No need to hear what my friends think about
politics.

------
sdiq
The Guardian's CIF (Comment Is Free) is place I really enjoyed a few years
back. Now, the number of users has gone up, I think, and the quality of
comments isn't as good as it used to be. theguardian.com

------
max_
I was going to say Reddit. But for some reason(I speculate it is the
toxicity), HN is where I have most of my online discussions

------
n3t
Back in the days I used to discuss at a few IRC channels with pretty high SNR.
Sadly, these communities faded out.

------
rianjs
The Ars Technica forums are generally quite good. The non-tech forums require
being a subscriber, though.

------
ausjke
for local community elections etc we actually use nextdoor.

I am interested in one topic now that more and more school districts are going
pork-free these days but don't know where to discuss that, so yes I'm unsure
where to discuss civil topics outside of local issues.

------
baq
every strongly moderated place will do. HN and some subreddits like r/science,
r/askscience, etc. are of very good quality. can't stress enough that
moderation is the key.

~~~
brador
Every strongly moderated place turns to the bias of the moderators. Any
discussion outside their allowance gets censored.

~~~
baq
which is often better than no moderation, as evidenced by this site.

------
justifier
when you bring it with you it is anywhere

------
ncouture
irc.freenode.net ##politics or ##<other subjects of interest>

------
DeathArrow
Try 4chan.org/b , the only sane place for civilized people.

~~~
PatentTroll
Yup, that or YouTube comments.

------
CompelTechnic
bogleheads.org is a forum for conservative investing, but it ends up tying
into proactive and insightful discussion about all sorts of lifestyle issues.
I enjoy it a lot!

------
hkmurakami
Ironically, FB

------
stevenmays
Here...

------
wprapido
quora FTW!

------
mozumder
[http://Fark.com](http://Fark.com) has been my favorite.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
I mainly frequent the Entertainment and Politics sections of Fark.

The Geek topic is generally too non-technical for me.

------
LulzSect
[https://firesofheaven.org](https://firesofheaven.org)

------
fatdog
A slack channel linked to the community of edge.org would be pretty good.

------
known
Hurting someone with the truth is better than killing them with a lie.

~~~
krapp
The assertion that civility and honesty are mutually opposed is a common one,
but it's neither insightful, nor accurate.

~~~
saintzozo
The distinction between civil criticism and unholy flame only exists to an
uncommonly mature audience. None of the major internet communities, including
this one, gracefully host controversial arguments. The end result is almost
always censorship.

