
Ask HN: HN Political News Overload? - EzGraphs
There has been a noticeable increase in political topics since I joined HN a few years back.  The HN Guidelines lead off with the following:<p>&quot;Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they&#x27;re evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.&quot;<p>Some of the stories posted are indeed of specific interest to community.  Very few are evidence of some &quot;interesting new phenomenon&quot;.  Most are a rehashing of the same old topics.<p>One of the most admirable things about hackers is their ability to accomplish great things without - or in spite of government.  The recent preoccupation is a bit sad.  Great minds could be focused on better things.<p>Any thoughts on solutions to this concern?  Yes - one would be to ignore political posts and move on to others of interest.  But based upon comments I have seen by numerous respected HN members, I am not the only one seeing this.  Any thoughts on how filter&#x2F;tagging&#x2F;flagging might apply?
======
davidw
I've written a lot about this topic, but let's see if I can sum it up:

* Politics are way more important than most of what we talk about. So if we talk politics, we could easily fill the front page with it, and crowd out all the unimportant tech stuff. Who cares about Bootstrap when people are throwing bananas at a minister in the Italian government because she's black?

* People don't seem to get that you can compartmentalize: I care deeply about politics, but I also like having a high quality tech site that is about tech and startups. On these threads, people say that if I don't want politics on HN, I must not care about politics at all. Couldn't be farther from the truth. I also love to follow professional cycling, but I don't want politics on those sites either.

* Way more people care about politics than the stuff that makes HN HN. If we open the floodgates, it will attract lots of people who will dilute the site. As noted elsewhere, I think this is something of a feedback loop.

* I don't like the divisiveness of the subject. There are frequent posters here who have said they are Republicans, and given their statements on religion, maybe they're even in favor of _$a_very_divisive_issue_. I _do not_ want to get into that discussion with them. It won't help anyone, will likely alienate people from the site, will probably lead to hurt feelings, and so on and so forth. I want to talk with these people about tech and startups. That's what we have in common.

* The quality of many of these discussions is not high, and for anyone who has been on this planet for a little while, little of it is a new or interesting contribution to the subjects under discussion. You can find the same topics discussed all over the internet, in every language.

* I think that the site has been "holed below the waterline" by the NSA stuff and the subsequent flood of articles, as well as the "outrage" articles about various grave injustices. Those tend to get a lot of upvotes and heated discussion too. I do not think that it will recover unless PG & Co start moderating it in a more heavy handed way.

~~~
igravious
Oh?

You know what? I'm glad that all these political stories are making the front
page. You may not care about privacy on the internet but I do. I care about it
_a lot_.

Though I am a flawed being in many ways I would love to leave this world in
better shape than when I got a hold of it. That's not going to happen if we
bury our head in the sand when the shit gets real. And it's getting real.

I have spent years being a free and open-source software evangelist. That
means I care deeply about the freedoms surrounding computing platforms. Turns
out governments were doing an end run round all that. Big deal, so I can
connect my shiny new freedom-loving Linux box to the very non-free internet.
The internet is _the_ computing platform that binds us all together. The
spooks are destroying the internet.

This is not just any old politics. This is all about privacy on the internet.
It's about wiretapping the internet pipes. It's about snooping on everybody's
conversations. It's about mass surveillance.

We've almost got our very own panopticon.

And you want to yack on about yet another web framework or javascript library
or css library or whatever. That kind of stuff excites me too but right now
maybe we got more pressing business? We are the people who actually understand
the capabilities and implications of these political news stories. Your
average Joe on the street doesn't know his RAM from his hard-drive.

These recent political stories are at the intersection of a lot of stuff that
I care very passionately about. Code + philosophy.

HN has not been "holed below the waterline". Provocative and poetic and all as
that image may be. And what do you advocate? Political (self)censorship.
Really? If HN gets censored I suspect many will leave.

~~~
jallmann
It'd be nice if the "political" stories were confined to discussing the
code+philosophy of privacy and Internet freedom. But the majority are puff
pieces or knee-jerk outrage articles that contribute _very little_ to the
overall discourse, except to fan the flames.

There are tons and tons of ways to discuss privacy and security in ways that
are topical to _Hacker_ News. Tools, methods, counter-measures, threat models,
secure protocols, best practices, crypto, anonymization, companies and
startups engaging in such, etc etc etc. These are topics that HN's core
audience can engage with, while still being relevant to current events. Even
the legal stuff (FISA and warrant compliance, legality of wiretapping, etc) is
interesting, especially as it relates to our startups and the companies we
deal with.

There is an argument to be made that surveillance/wiretapping programs require
a political/legislative fix, not a technical one. But on the whole, I'd prefer
that discussions involving the minutiae of such (and the events which
propagated them) not be conducted here, at least not in recent quantities.

~~~
igravious
I hear what you're saying and I agree with you to an extent. Sometimes the
flames need fanning to get people thinking and engaged. This is one of those
times I would submit.

> There is an argument to be made that surveillance/wiretapping programs
> require a political/legislative fix, not a technical one.

Remember when Stallman couldn't fix his printer? Do we have an analogy with
what is currently happening? Our fellow techies have enabled a system of mass
surveillance over us all - just like techies churning out proprietary code for
corporations. Look how long it has taken for free and open-source software to
make a comeback. Thirty years one could argue. That social ill never got a
political/legislative fix. The GPL was a hack. Perhaps we need some kind of
Stallman-like hack to act as a catalyst/seed to start pushing back against the
erosion of privacy and internet freedom. Until we know for sure that the fix
has to be a political/technical one then maybe we should keep the ideas and
discussions flowing here. But at the same time I agree, maybe you are right,
maybe this is not the right forum. But then, where is?

------
glesica
I think that this...

    
    
       > One of the most admirable things about hackers is their ability to accomplish great things without - or in spite of government.
    

... is really a pretty sad, small statement. If anything, government is of
more importance to us because it is the hacker mentality itself that is under
attack right now. The reason, I think, that so many of the recent issues have
salience with this community is that what various governments are trying to do
is to shut down disruptive economic and social activities, the lifeblood of
the hacker community, in order to protect entrenched and well-connected
interests.

At some point we all have to stop saying "well I'm a {baker, hacker,
librarian, truck driver,...}, why should I worry about these problems?" and
realize that this is world-altering stuff happening, and if you want _your_
little corner of the world to survive, you have to mobilize to protect it,
even if that means doing a little less of the things you normally do.

So I'm OK with more political posts, as long as something actually comes from
the emotions they generate. Frankly, I've noticed a change in myself. Twelve
months ago I didn't care one bit about cryptography and networking, they were
just useful plumbing that worked (or didn't). But now I'm moving to learn more
about these topics because of recent events and a desire to at least better
understand what is happening. HN was partially responsible for this shift in
my attitudes, so good on you guys!

~~~
kjackson2012
Exactly. Technology and especially things like cryptography and hacking, can
potentially get you thrown in jail again, after a decade of peace. Does anyone
even remember the immense legal problems that Phil Zimmermann had with
releasing PGP? What about Kevin Mitnick? They put Mitnick in solitary
confinement for years because the US government convinced a judge that "he had
the ability to start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone" (as per
Wikipedia). Guys, this is what we're dealing with, except now we have
Guantanomo Bay where US citizens can be thrown into indefinitely with no due
process for potentially being a terrorist.

Are we bound to repeat the same mistakes again, because a generation of
"hackers" don't want to educate themselves on the importance of politics and
concepts like "freedom"? Or is all you want to do is sit back, and fantasize
that you will create the next Facebook, and you won't have to care about
things like freedom, the Constitution, etc?

~~~
twoodfin
_Guys, this is what we 're dealing with, except now we have Guantanomo Bay
where US citizens can be thrown into indefinitely with no due process for
potentially being a terrorist._

It's just this kind of hyperbolic nonsense that is polluting the discussion
here. A modern day Mitnick could _not_ be "thrown into Guantanamo Bay" for
"potentially being a terrorist". That would require the system to have broken
down far, far more than it actually has, and indeed if it were that screwed
up, anything we "hackers" on hn could do about it would likely be too little,
too late.

One important skill engineers require is the ability to see the world as it
is, and craft an appropriate solution. Maybe there's a certain thrill to
imagining that "Big Brother" is here and we can band together to rebel against
him, but that's a romantic fantasy, not reality.

~~~
kjackson2012
Hyperbolic nonsense? I suggest that you _educate yourself_ on what is going on
right now. There is no hyperbole, there is no pollution, there is only
uneducated folks like yourself that don't seem to understand that things
_have_ broken down.

Obama signed off on the _execution of known American citizens_ via drone
attacks. These are American citizens that are protected by the US constitution
against things like this. We're not talking about Pakistani citizens, or
Afghanis. They were American citizens. Sure, they may have been terrorists,
but they deserved a trial. Just like the Oklahoma Bomber, and the Unabomber.
If you think it's okay for the US government to target its own citizens for
drone execution without a trial, then we really don't have anything to discuss
here.

[http://rt.com/usa/us-government-drone-killing-660/](http://rt.com/usa/us-
government-drone-killing-660/)

Kevin Mitnick was thrown into prison, and suffered years in solitary
confinement because of lies told by the US government. The 8th amendment to
the Constitution is supposed to protect American citizens from this, but
because of lies and delusion, they subverted the Constitution because they
"feared" that Mitnick would become a nuclear terrorist and destroy the US. By
saying that the US needed to be protected from Mitnick because he could start
a nuclear war with whistles in a phone, they essentially charged him with
being a nuclear terrorist, before it became chic. Yes he committed crimes, but
they were social engineering crimes and electronic hacking. Nowhere did he
even have a hint of wanting to destroy the US, and yet somehow his charged
were trumped up to nuclear terrorism. This was 1995. You don't think today he
would be thrown in Guantanamo or some other military prison indefinitely at
this point? I have NO confidence that the current US government would give him
due process in this day and age.

If you missed this news article, 3 religious nuclear protesters broke into a
poorly guarded nuclear facility and set up a protest. Over the course of a few
months, their charged escalated from trespassing to charges of sabotage and
"intending to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the
United States and willful damage of national security premises in violation of
18 US Code 2155, punishable with up to 20 years in prison."

[https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7](https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7)

They are now _jailed_ because "the court ruled that both the sabotage and the
damage to property convictions were defined by Congress as federal crimes of
terrorism".

And, of course that poor kid who was thrown in jail for making a terrorist
threat for uttering a stupid "joke" online about killing kids.

Now, explain to me again how what I'm saying about Guantanamo is "hyperbolic
nonsense"? Do you really believe that in this environment we're living, that
Mitnick wouldn't be charged with terrorism? More importantly, is this really
the US that you want to live in?

~~~
twoodfin
_You don 't think today he would be thrown in Guantanamo or some other
military prison indefinitely at this point?_

No, I don't, because Kevin Mitnick wasn't a member of the U.S. military like
Manning, and it would be manifestly unconstitutional to transfer a U.S.
citizen from U.S. soil into the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The _habeas_
petition to the Supreme Court would take about nine seconds.

If you think the Obama administration no longer feels bound at all by the
Constitution even in the face of an explicit ruling from SCOTUS, then, as I
said, debating about it on hn will accomplish essentially nothing: We're
already way too far down the slope. You apparently think that's the case, but
that _should_ be a fringe position in any community I'd like to participate
in. Sadly it seems it's not.

~~~
whiddershins
I think people are getting personal here and the substance might be getting
obscured. I will express my concerns differently: although you are probably
right, technically and specifically, about relocating a prisoner to
Guantanamo, I think the details are obscuring the gist. The US government acts
with impunity, and really always has, against declared threats. Of course
there is always a "reason" and a legal mechanism, and people who are concerned
often articulate the details of the mechanism incorrectly, this doesn't change
the substance of the concern.

Look at Waco, the MOVE bombing, consider that US officials have been unwilling
to go on record against the legality of drone strike assassinations against US
citizens on US soil, I don't think much hampers the executive branch from
acting. Regardless of the label or legal doctrine they use to explain it.

Afterwards, there is always a narrative in the media that describes the people
on the receiving end of these acts as crazy, weird, threatening, etc. This
makes it appear only natural that the government acted with overwhelming force
against its citizens ... but that just means we've fallen for the "rights are
only for people like me" fallacy which underscores every system of oppression
and exploitation.

~~~
whiddershins
Ok, who down voted my laboriously typed (on an iPad!) and thoughtful comment.
Really?

------
tikhonj
I think having some threads about politics--at least the main issues most
people here care about--is very valuable. HN provides a particular perspective
that is fairly hard to find outside other tech sites. Sure, the comments are
not always up to quality and are sometimes quite extreme, but they offer a
very interesting and often reasonably well-supported perspective.

The real problem is how many different articles and threads get upvoted _on
the same topic_. One or two Snowden threads? Great! But ten or twenty? With
more than one at a time? It's all too much. Not only does this take spots away
from other relevant topics but it also fragments the discussion. And so we get
repetition. Repeated comments, repeated ideas, repeated arguments... ad
nauseum. I only have so much to gain from reading the same opinions over and
over--especially if I agree with them!

This happens with other common topics as well, but it seems particularly
endemic with certain political themes. Moreover, the political articles tend
to be fairly similar to each other in nature and content. Sure, we get a fair
amount of Go and Haskell articles too, but at least the articles themselves
tend to vary quite a bit.

Of course, a very important aspect of HN is that everything is ultimately
implicitly decided by the community. So here's my plea to everyone voting on
articles: try to vote for fewer political articles, especially on "hot"
topics. Don't completely ignore politics, but try to avoid having more than
one every couple of days or at least more than one at a time.

Now, how do we actually go about doing this? I actually have no idea.
Hopefully somebody else can come up with something :).

~~~
derefr
I've had the idea for a while for a new thread-management model for social
bookmarking sites like Reddit or HN, and I think it would help to avoid this
quagmire.

• In the new model, multiple "posts" (outbound article links or textual self-
posts) could be attached to a single comment thread. The thread, not the post,
would be the root-level object tracked by the system: Thread HAS MANY {Post,
Comment}.

• New, hot posts which were _started_ as their own threads, but which "should
belong" to an existing thread, would get _merged into_ that existing thread by
the mods.

• The combined thread would then appear, under the title of the newest "post"
in it, on the index pages, with a single aggregate score from all the posts
merged to create it (though any "freshness"-based calculations would
presumably look at the age of the newest post merged into the thread, not the
age of the thread as a whole.)

• Clicking through from the index page would always take you to the thread
page, not directly to the outbound link URL of the newest post.

• On the thread page, you'd see a header section containing all the actual
outbound links and/or textual self-posts, newest first; and then a single
unified comments section (also merged from all the post-threads.)

• Comments would be encouraged to take _all_ the posts in the thread so far as
prerequisite reading for their comment, rather than just the newest one. In
other words, to speak to the _accumulated knowledge of the thread so far_.

• Older topics, still attached to the thread, would remain open for dicussion;
you'd never have to rehash your old comment about X from the old X thread in
the new X thread, since your comment would still _be_ there in the new X
thread (it being the same thread.)

\---

So for example, in this model, there'd only be one "Snowden/NSA/PRISM" thread.
When new articles came out regarding all that, they'd get attached to the
thread, the thread would pop to the hot page (to roughly where the article-on-
its-own was trending), and the previous discussion in the thread could be
continued in light of the new article.

Thoughts?

~~~
benaiah
Forgive me if I'm missing the point, but it looks like it's just a complicated
description of tagging, with commenting on the tags instead of the individual
articles.

That said, it could still be interesting. The problem is, unless you're
commenting on specific articles, you'll just end up with extremely general,
"cheap" comments filling up the tag, with no specific topics to produce
genuinely interesting conversations instead of blathering pontification.

It would be interesting to see a system like that. I think it would require
some very strong community norms to keep it in check, which is fundamentally
unstable (e.g., HN today is very different than it was a couple years ago,
when I started reading).

~~~
derefr
What I was going for was more like a traditional message-board design with
"forum threads", each on a given "topic" that drifts over time along with the
conversation. (Tags keep a discussion pinned to what the tag is "about",
whereas a thread is just a cluster of posts, and the cluster's "topic"\--its
center of mass--can drift as more points are added to the cluster.)

Except, with this "message board", some posts (text posts or links) could be
granted a special status and "promoted" up to a pinned area at the top, to
serve as a collection of "prerequisites and resources for discussion." The
thread's "preview" on the index would then show newest pinned stuff.

~~~
benaiah
Thanks for the clarification - that does sound more nuanced than what I
gathered originally. It actually sounds like a quite interesting way to do
discussion - I'd love to hear more, if you've fleshed it out any further.

------
Wilya
My problem with political topics on HN is that the focus is (in 90% of the
cases) completely US-centric.

Hearing what US people think about their health system, their education
system, their immigration system, or SF roads is pretty uninteresting to me,
since it doesn't affect me. I can tolerate them once in a while, just to be
aware of the general opinion, but I have zero interest in diving in detailled
discussions on the details.

And the political context and problems in my country are completely different,
so they can't even be taken as example or something.

~~~
venomsnake
For better or worse US is still the most influential country in the world with
disproportionately big military spending and the cradle of the majority of
tech industry giants. It is important what goes on there. US also is one of
the big bastions of freedoms at least on paper. The erosion of rights and
liberties there is scary.

~~~
a-priori
_US also is one of the big bastions of freedoms at least on paper._

If you want to know what the biggest issue facing Americans right now, you
have just summarized it nicely by this line of thinking. This mythology of the
US being a forward-thinking model of how to run a country may have been true
in the 18th century (arguable), but since then the rest of the world has
caught up. Today, on the world stage the United States is a nation like any
other.

In fact, there are many nations where people are just as free, if not more,
than in the US. As one example, while the myth of the "American Dream" is
about social mobility, especially inter-generational mobility, in reality the
US ranks fairly poorly by that measure. It is not enough for everyone to be
_de jure_ free, if their parents' race or socioeconomic status strongly
determine the choices a person has available to them and their eventual
success in life.

The US has deep social, political and economic problems, all of which impinge
on an American's practical freedoms. Until Americans recognize these problems
facing their country, and cease with this "bastion of freedom" bullshit, those
problems cannot be addressed and will continue to fester.

------
rdl
I have no problem with political issues on HN if they're issues inherently
relevant to technology: US immigration, censorship, secret spying, DRM, CALEA,
CISPA/PIPA/SOPA, etc. Things related to startup financing (JOBS Act and
equivalent) are cool too.

Borderline are probably general education (edu tech or tech specific education
are fine), maybe investment tax laws to the extent they influence startup
investments. Healthcare is generally not relevant except as there are tech
solutions (which is highly relevant); healthcare for startups or individuals
working in tech is maybe borderline.

Unrelated political issues (gun control or gun rights, politicians in general,
tax policy, war, ...) seem better suited for other forums.

What we really need is "meta headlines" where the ~10 daily articles about
Snowden can get consolidated into one post with shared comments. Same thing
happens whenever a new product is launched, too -- it's not specific to the
content.

------
DanBC
Yes. There is far too much political nonsense on HN.

Most people do not downvote it. Most people do not flag it. A few people who
have flagged it have lost flagging privileges.

Some of the new users brought in with political stories are using behaviours
learnt elsewhere.

I've noticed a few long time users are missing. I don't know if that's got
anything to do with the atmosphere on HN, or if they're just too busy at the
moment.

But please, flag content that should not be here. Down vote comments that
should not be here.

 _And please stop feeding the fucking trolls_ \- While it's possible to have a
discussion on the finer points of climate change science there are a number of
climate change denialists[1] on HN, but there are also people happy to feed
those trolls. It's disruptive and harmful.

[1] Also other wingnuts.

~~~
res0nat0r
I started flagging stories last month when everything on the front page was
related to Snowden walking across the airport and taking a dump, and other
rehashed outrage at the NSA over and over and over, and it appears my flagging
privs have been removed.

------
ThomPete
Once Reddit turned into a liberal orgy I left and found HN which for a long
time haven't been occupied by political discussions. (and I am not a
republican)

Now it seems that the same tendencies are trending, which is sad because it's
very hard to not see how this can spin out of control and attract the "wrong"
people.

We should discuss things like healthcare, snowden, patent law etc. but try and
keep a focus on the mechanics of these things, rather than the morals.

------
felixmar
I suspect that PG has given up moderating Hacker News and currently sees HN
mostly as an effective marketing channel for YC startups. Lately most replies
from PG and many founders seem filtered to prevent the inevitable backlash.
The raw opinionated discussions likely happen elsewhere and i miss reading
those.

------
TeMPOraL
I think the reason HN has seen more politics recently is that the topics
directly relate to every-day life of hackers. Most of the things happening on
the political scene are pretty much irrelevant to us (or to anything, really),
but when someone is trying to break the Internet, we take notice.

pg actually described this quite nicely in 'The Word "Hacker"'[0]

[0] - [http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html)

To quote:

 _To hackers the recent contraction in civil liberties seems especially
ominous. That must also mystify outsiders. Why should we care especially about
civil liberties? Why programmers, more than dentists or salesmen or
landscapers?_

 _Let me put the case in terms a government official would appreciate. Civil
liberties are not just an ornament, or a quaint American tradition. Civil
liberties make countries rich. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs. civil
liberties, you 'd notice a definite trend. Could civil liberties really be a
cause, rather than just an effect? I think so. I think a society in which
people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the
most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most
influential people. Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries
become poor; and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there is a Laffer
curve for government power, just as for tax revenues. At least, it seems
likely enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out.
Unlike high tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns out to be
a mistake._

 _This is why hackers worry. The government spying on people doesn 't
literally make programmers write worse code. It just leads eventually to a
world in which bad ideas win. And because this is so important to hackers,
they're especially sensitive to it. They can sense totalitarianism approaching
from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm._

The another, more mundane reason, would be that political topics are very
conductive to flamew^H^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussion, and we fall prey to this like
everyone else.

As for my personal feel, I do think there have been a bit too many political
articles here recently. Not because the topics are bad, but because most of
them don't add anything new to the story.

Maybe it's time to start posting about Erlang again?

ETA

As for other solutions, maybe let's just wait 'till the Snowdengate blows over
while aggresively flagging any political non-topics that tag along for a ride?

~~~
kmfrk
"They post about it, because it affects them" is a pretty big subtle
indictment of the community, I think.

Not that I necessarily disagree, but it's something to think about.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The times we could tinker with the Internet and no one else cared about those
'bunch of geeks in their basement' are now over. The Internet went mainstream,
everyone and their dog uses it for half of their life things. The Politics,
once mostly irrelevant to tech, is coming for us, whether we want it or not.

------
lifeisstillgood
I believe that Software is the new literacy. As such software will / is
becoming a vital operational part of all parts of modern life, from drone
operating systems to 911 call centres.

The new literacy has the capacity to bring marvellous new benefits - mostly if
it comes with the attitudes that foster that literacy (most literate people do
not advocate burning books, most software-literate people advocate net
neutrality). (see pg
([http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html)) thx
to Temporal)

Like it or not, what we do for a living will impact everyone, and carries with
it a political overtone for maximum success. That means hackers have a
political role to play (not in the partisan sense, but in the broader life of
a polis.)

And so we should do what HN does best - demand evidence. Agitate, vote for and
lobby for empirically driven politics. Demand a law that requires every
national or federal political decision to have a 95% confidence value of
working. Seems simple :-)

------
yareally
There's a few way to improve content without altering the system (which can
take much longer and have positive/negative effects).

One way to instantly get more diversity in content is to frequent the "new"
page more often. I find myself doing it more lately to vote up
unique/interesting stuff that might otherwise get passed over. There's
actually quite a few articles that are front page worthy that get passed over,
but it takes time to go through and look. I just take a small break from
working every now and vote a few up instead of waiting for them to hit the
front page.

Another is to be more discriminative with what one upvotes. Avoid upvoting
things from questionable sources or those that fall into being link
bait/deceiving.

A third suggestion is to submit content that's accurate, informative and more
diverse in hopes it gets upvoted. Try to find articles that you generally
wouldn't find on another community.

Fancy algorithms and solutions aside, content on a forum is mostly a
reflection of the current state of the community, for better or for worse.
Alternatively implementing restrictions/policies would irritate some
percentage of the community, but mostly that comes down to whether it's a
percentage the community that one wishes to cultivate and maintain. As a
community grows larger, interests become less focused more watered down as the
community becomes more widely known. No major online community thus far I know
of has been spared of that.

Addendum: I don't come to HN for the politics really anymore than I would come
here for sporting news. I came here originally for the hundreds of insightful
hacker/technology related discussions I have bookmarked and found more useful
than any previous forum I have frequented. When discussions stray over into
other interesting things at times, that's okay, but too much of any topic,
tech/hacker related or not, becomes trite and repetitive.

------
DanielBMarkham
When I started working with computers, nobody had one. People who programmed
computers wore suits, and went to work in special air-conditioned rooms. Then
we went through a stage where anybody engaged in commerce had a computer. My
dentist had several computers. Finally, we're at the point where everybody in
the world has computers -- many times several of them.

My point being that it's very difficult to distinguish between a computer
story and a dentistry story. Computers are everywhere. They are part of
everything. Likewise, people who hack and busy hacking everything. As hackers,
we are involved in most all of the world's activities.

As several other commenters have pointed out, it's not that hackers are
suddenly interested in price subsidies for turtle farmers in rural Texas. It's
the other way around. It's that politics has invaded hacking. Political-types
are taking the tools we have developed to help people and are using them for
massive surveillance.

I think we do a great disservice to technology and ourselves if we view
anything outside of technical, startup, and nerd-bait topics as not germane
here. I think there is a difference between partisan bickering about some
issue where one party is wanting to fight the other, for instance the issue of
minimum wages in the U.S., and an issue like the extent of foreign
participation in Echelon.

So sure, divisive political stories on social issues that only create strife
and division? Count me out on those. Stories about how the tech we use and
develop every day is being used to harm people? If that's not hacker-related,
I don't know what is.

------
kjackson2012
If HN wasn't interested in politics, the threads wouldn't make it onto the
first page. If you don't like the post, then downvote/flag it. If you don't
like the post, but your peers do, which appears to be the case, then suck it
up. That's the whole point about crowdsourced moderation, you might not like
what you see. Crying over the content of crowdsourced newsfeeds because it's
not showing what you want is ridiculous.

Politics has been extremely important in the past several weeks to many
Americans. It turns out that our hacker peers have been using technology to
circumvent the Constitution. This isn't something done by lazy, government-
level programmers. If you look at some of the other IT projects commissioned
by the government, like consolidating government datacenters, those projects
have all essentially failed. Instead, as Snowden demonstrated, you have a
very, sophisticated mechanism to view everything about anyone. The programmers
at the NSA are the very best of our peers. And they are working on arguably
illegal programs that have made the US a worse place. It's certainly a worse
place for foreigners who want to use services like Google, Facebook, etc. If I
were a foreigner, there's no way I would use those services, since I have zero
protection or privacy against the NSA. And if you are one of the 0.01% startup
success stories and become billionaires, you will now need to face the US
government and hand over all your user data.

Forgetting about politics, forgetting about things like the Constitution, and
living in your bubble of a life is great if you're a kid, but the world
doesn't work like that. Things like DefCon that remind people that sometimes
you do have a reason to be paranoid is important. I was talking with an Ivy
League 19 year old, and he didn't care that the US government was potentially
reading everything about him. He said he had nothing to hide. This is the type
of fate we need to avoid, having the seemingly best of the best being
uneducated on things like like politics and ideas of simple freedom.

------
northwest
This of course leads to the question "What counts as a political post?".

The reality is: Everything is connected and interacts and we usually prefer to
ignore this fact, because it "makes things easier" (only on the surface).

There is a _huge_ link between technology and politics.

Personally, I believe it is in our future's interest that we learn to think
more complexly.

EDIT: Can you answer the question "What counts as a political post?", so we're
on the same page?

~~~
DanBC
Here's my opinion.

"Political" would tend to mean something that people take a fixed view on, and
where they're unlikely to change their opinion even if you present nice data
to support your view.

"$PARTY has problems with massive IT project" isn't necessarily political.

"Dumb $PARTYians screw up yet another simple project!!1!" probably is.

It's probably best to avoid, even if there is a tech link:-

Israel / Palestine

Circumcision (ie, even if the story is "new laser robot performs safe
circumcision" it's probably best to avoid it.)

Abortion

Political processes as they're happening (ie, if the primaries are in
progress, don't talk about them)

Anything more about Snowden or NSA or spying. You should have assumed your
email was open to all, that's been common advice since email was invented, and
we've been warning you about Echelon and similar since the 90's.

Global warming unless you can ignore the trolls

Sexism unless you can ignore the hateful trolls

etc etc etc.

I would seriously prefer to read tabs vs spaces or vi vs emacs than a lot of
the stuff on the front page.

------
smackay
Most of the political posts are related to the delay (or inability) in
legal/social systems catching up with technological change. This is not really
new but the frequency of these mis-matches are probably increasing as the
technologies improve and get more widely used/deployed. There will be similar
debates when each wave of change (3D printing, genetic engineering, etc.) hits
the mainstream.

This all points to a greater requirement for technologists to be aware of and
indeed in control of the political aspects of what is being created. The days
of tinkering for tachnologies sake are probably becoming rather limited.

------
northwest
Can somebody please answer the first question "What counts as a political
post?"

\- Is "Snowden" = politics?

\- Is "NSA" = politics?

\- Is "War machine" = politics?

\- Is "Poverty" = politics?

\- Is "Unemployment" = politics?

Let's first try to see if "everybody" has the same definition.

Then "HN management" can update their manifest so we actually do have a
_tangible result_ after this discussion.

EDIT: As of now, we still don't have an agreed-on definition for what counts
as "a political post". Or am I taking this discussion too seriously? Please
downvote if you feel it was a bad idea I signed up on this site, I'd like to
know...

~~~
Wilya
Rule of thumb: if you can quote Obama's point of view on something, it's
probably politics.

(food would be a false positive, I suppose, but you wouldn't get so many other
errors)

~~~
bnegreve
Fun fact: Obama also has an opinion on bubble sort.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4RRi_ntQc8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4RRi_ntQc8)

------
kmfrk
Hacker News is reddit, reddit is Hacker News.

I think the only alternative is go create a competing site with heavier,
visible moderation.

A non-political Hacker News might have enough people interest to garner a
decent audience. I am pretty fed up with the screeds myself and would welcome
any (well-executed) alternative.

I haven't seen any competing sites/CMSes that weren't incredibly half-assed.

~~~
DanBC
You would need 2 competing sites.

One for the HN alternative, and one for the sub-optimal HN alternative. When
people flood the new HN with poor material you send them over to the less
moderated site.

~~~
kmfrk
There are plenty of sub-optimal alternatives - I just don't want to name them.

A lot of people who create alternatives have way too much confidence in "the
launch". It's better if they actually have a good community to show for it
instead of some glorified CMS with "potential".

Hacker News like success stories, so that would be a good angle to promote a
new community with - rather than announcing an inconsequential launch.

------
lifeisstillgood
A quick summary of the discussion as I see it [#]

We would like politics threads on HN to be more heavily moderated (out of the
way) because

1\. HN is still US-centric, and US policy discussions are not the same as
discussing the facts behind the politics.

2\. We can get our political fix in (m)any other place(s).

3\. The total number of political comments and discussions on HN that have add
to the total sum of human knowledge is zero.

4\. Finding articles that do satisfy ones intellectual cravings is hard and if
it is not rewarded, will be done less and less.

[#] cos its had the highest signal to comment ratio for a very long time

------
peterwwillis
If one more upvoted story talks about a possible controversial law that
somebody doesn't like, or the latest development in The Snowden Drama, or a
new article about how the FBI _might be_ talking to the NSA about the CIA
doing something somewhere, or how _somebody in government might be doing some
thing wrong_ , i'm going to bludgeon the mods with a LART.

We want hacker stories. Not the politico-news roundup for computer geeks.

------
sanukcm
I don't disagree that HN has been preoccupied with political issues recently.

Given the nature of these political issues (and their direct impact on tech)
I'm not sure that this is such a bad thing.

As far as this thought:

> Great minds could be focused on better things.

I disagree.

I feel our focus on these things is extremely important. Don Knuth says it
well here: [http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/iaq.html](http://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/iaq.html)

> "If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions
> like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of making things
> worse?"

Of course, this is just a re-wording of Edmund Burke's famous (and oft-used to
the point of cliché) quote: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is
that good men do nothing." The point is nonetheless valid, however. If hackers
don't commit to thinking, speaking and debating about political issues
relating to tech - who will? Sure, HN might be an echo chamber where we preach
to the choir until our faces are blue - but it provides a place for us to hone
our arguments, build alliances and keep our fingers on the pulse of the hacker
community when it comes to such issues.

All of that said, I couldn't agree with you more on this point:

> "Very few are evidence of some "interesting new phenomenon". Most are a
> rehashing of the same old topics."

I'd definitely like to see less than 7 articles on the front page every time
Snowden opens his mouth, unless all those 7 articles each have something
unique and interesting to add to the discussion.

I'm not sure how this can be reconciled with the fact that if 7 different
posts about the same thing make it to the front page, then there is obviously
a massive interest in the community on that topic. What about the wishes of
all of these contributors, who have voted already in our debate by putting the
content on the front page in the first place?

One possible solution is to implement some sort of clustering system that
groups posts about the same topic into a single "uber post" (with links to
articles and a single comments thread). I'm neither a NLP nor a ML guru, so I
have no idea how feasible this would be to automate given such a small data
set. I'm also not sure if a manual tagging / grouping system would carry with
it more overhead than it is worth. Most of the time (when we are blissfully
ignoring the NSA, censorship, etc.) the front page is reasonably diverse.

------
shin_lao
It's probably because everybody has got on opinion on political issues,
whereas technical matters might generate less feedback...

~~~
yareally
I would say most people are just as opinionated about language, hardware and
software choices as they are about politics. Though the participation
threshold on most political topics is probably lower as politics tends to have
a wider appeal and more inclusive than say a more narrowly used programming
language or software tool.

~~~
davidw
> I would say most people are just as opinionated about language, hardware and
> software choices as they are about politics.

Err... go into a bar, in, say, Iowa, and ask whether people prefer PHP to
Python. Then ask what they think of Obama.

~~~
icebraining
Yes, but yareally's post was made in the context of HN discussions, I don't
think the point was to be taken as a statement about the whole humanity.

~~~
davidw
There are no barriers to entry to take part in HN.

~~~
yareally
No explicit barriers yes, but many tend to participate more in discussions
where they have an interest/opinion in the subject matter than ones there they
do not. Even your previous comment about walking into a bar in Iowa reflects
that as people that are generally familiar with whatever topic are more
interested in discussing it than those that do not. Since nearly everyone,
regardless of background has some opinion and knowledge of politics, the
barrier for entry into those discussion is much lower and likelihood for such
articles being upvoted.

~~~
davidw
> Since nearly everyone, regardless of background has some opinion and
> knowledge of politics, the barrier for entry into those discussion is much
> lower and likelihood for such articles being upvoted.

And thus more people who are otherwise marginally interested in the site can
participate!

This is a feedback loop.

~~~
yareally
Yes, since looking at your other comments in the thread, we're in agreement. I
just misinterpreted your original reply to me.

------
MichaelMoser123
One could add a new political page, there is one for 'ask' and 'jobs', maybe
there should be one for 'politics'.

------
tomelders
It's a tricky one. I for one discover most of the political issues relating to
"hacker stuff" here on HN. I'd be worse off if it went away since I don't have
time to spend on other sites.

But I agree, purely political stuff that has no relation to "hacker stuff"
should probably be kept elsewhere.

But then, we're hackers. We're meant to be the people who find practical
solutions to complicated problems, and I think that political issues do
present the kind of problems that hackers would like to take on.

I don't know. Like I say, it's a tricky one.

~~~
acjohnson55
"But then, we're hackers. We're meant to be the people who find practical
solutions to complicated problems, and I think that political issues do
present the kind of problems that hackers would like to take on."

Well said. Politics is ripe for disruption, to use the cliché.

------
ollysb
HN is currently the best site I know of for quality political discussion. It
doesn't cover the broadest range of topics though, heavily leaning towards
politics related towards technology. I'd actually like to see a broader range
of political stories. HN has grown hugely over the last few years and I'm sure
PG is resisting the urge to become more than a site for hackers. Having said
that it seems to have become that already. Some way to tag and filter the
stories would seem like the best way forwards. Any thoughts?

~~~
davidw
> HN is currently the best site I know of for quality political discussion.

That's indicative of just how horrible political discussions are on the
internet, because frankly, a lot of the discussions here are rehashing stuff
you can find in usenet postings in the 80ies. There is little that's new,
interesting or thoughtful in a lot of them, and a lot of inanity. "The US is
just like Russia and China!". Given that it's way cheaper to pull stupid
statements out of one's ass than it is to do the research and careful
argumentation to refute said statements, it's easy for cheap, junky commentary
to surpass the more thoughtful, expensive kind.

Here's a theory: a lot of HN users are in their early 20ies, and haven't
grappled with many of these issues before, so perhaps to them they really are
new and interesting, and they appreciate seeing them hashed out.

------
rb2e
People are passionate. If a subject comes up which ignites the passion and
touches them, they will get worked up about it. It’s not a unique feature of
HN. Its everywhere from Reddit to Facebook and YouTube comments.

I’ve come to believe there is a lot of group think when it comes to the nature
of comments. It’s a consensus of opinion and if you write something which goes
against the tide of the consensus, you will be down voted especially when its
around subjects people are passionate about it. I don’t have a problem with
this per se but it can be annoying when you just wish to give an opposing view
point.

The fire, anger just touches some and the quiet ones shy away from posting for
fear of down votes and those who just wish to give an opposing viewpoint, end
up being censored by down votes and negative comments. To be honest, its seems
Reddit has influenced a style of voting behavior. It’s a “hive mind”
mentality.

I personally believe if you stopped displaying the total Karma for each
comment and on your profile, it would stop it being a point scoring mentality.
Quality content and discussion, not gaining karma points should be the focus.
Keep the number internal. Sometimes people say something popular just to get
points of Karma but there is no benefit of having a Karma total displayed, it
just turns into a phallus measuring completion ultimately. With the total
Hidden from profiles and comments, you will see in time a different dynamic.

~~~
DanBC
> If a subject comes up which ignites the passion and touches them, they will
> get worked up about it. It’s not a unique feature of HN.

The unique feature of HN is that those topics are explicitly mentioned as
things that should not be posted here.

([http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html))

> _A crap link is one that 's only superficially interesting. Stories on HN
> don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested
> in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting._

> _What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about
> the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be
> deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger,
> underlying trend, then perhaps it could be._

> _The worst thing to post or upvote is something that 's intensely but
> shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or
> videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto
> a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to
> be quieter._

------
tareqak
I think if you look at submissions from a numbers standpoint, the main
difference between political news submissions and "hacker news" submissions is
the number. As annoying as it may be, there are more outlets
(publishers/bloggers/articles etc) for political news than there are for
hacker news. Therefore, when someone writes about his or her weekend project,
there is one article; when a major security flaw is found in some piece of
hardware or software, there are three articles/blog posts; and when something
like news about SOPA/NSA/Snowden breaks, there are five to ten (or even more)
articles/blog posts/news media pages.

If we generously assume that 100% of arrive on HN as submissions, then it
makes sense that the distribution of submissions will weigh towards the more
popular in terms of number of submissions for different articles for the same
topic (visualize a histogram).

My solution would be to have a way to merge separate submissions that fall
under the same topic (basically, one or more URLs per topic). How it would be
implemented (tags, users marking submissions as "similar" or "flagged for
merge") would be up for debate.

Edit:

Maybe a single optional "political" tag with a profile setting and/or a
separate subsection for submissions marked as "political".

------
acjohnson55
"One of the most admirable things about hackers is their ability to accomplish
great things without - or in spite of government. The recent preoccupation is
a bit sad. Great minds could be focused on better things."

Government is certainly capable of excess, as we see on the front page of HN
every day, but there's a tremendous irony (or blindspot, more accurately) in
your statement. The computer industry as we know it, let alone the Internet,
would not exist if not for the government. Many of us benefited from public
education at some point in our lives, or were educated at universities by
professors whose research is at least to some extent government supported.
Let's not mythologize ourselves by pretending we build all of this great stuff
on our own in a vacuum.

Like it or not, government plays a huge role in the hacker world. It can be
both a huge force for innovation and an instrument of oppression. It behooves
us to understand how government interacts with individuals and organizations,
and current events. For me, the HN community does a great job of surfacing
news stories at the intersection of politics and technology.

------
kybernetyk
Overload? Hardly because HN is self moderating. If the community wasn't
interested in those topics they wouldn't rise to the top.

I for myself really like to read what fellow hackers think about certain
topics. And for that HN is great. Because I certainly won't get that from the
washington post comment section or /r/politics.

------
runn1ng
I will add this:

I generally don't mind the news, but the discussion at these submissions are
generally pretty retarded; and what is more scary to me, a lot of nonsence
gets upvoted and a lot of voices of reason get downvoted.

But I guess we are just becoming new digg/reddit/(take your pick) and this is
inevitable.

------
Zigurd
Surveillance, patents, DRM, and education have a direct impact on the
technology industry. Getting these things wrong could destroy our industry.
Health costs make it significantly more difficult to hire staff for new
ventures.

If there was a problem with electric power in the US, we would be talking
about that.

------
brymaster
EzGraphs: just because you don't find the topics of...

\- patents

\- DRM

\- mass surveillance

\- privacy

\- censorship

...interesting, doesn't mean that others do not. These are all very real
issues happening now and affecting the tech industry (you know, the livelihood
of most people that post here).

I know, for example, many programmers start squirming when these issues come
up because they're of the personality type that 'don't want to rock the boat'
but technical and 'political' issues overlap in a major way.

Certainly you wouldn't find these recent posts more relevant than the topics
at hand?

Dropbox’s San Francisco Office

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121234](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121234)

Bootstrap 3 RC1

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6112141](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6112141)

------
narrator
Politics is popular now because the hacker news crowd are like a bunch of
geeky high school kids who obsess about the gang that's been bullying them.
Their brilliant intellectual life is decimated by thoughts about the bully
gang.

------
Zarkonnen
I'm going to have to point out that "One of the most admirable things about
hackers is their ability to accomplish great things without - or in spite of
government." is in itself a pretty political statement.

But I definitely think it would be nice to not have the entire front page
blanketed with posts on the same current affairs topic. Not sure how to do
that though, without introducing tags, or categories, or asking/forcing people
to post links as comments if there's an existing post on the topic.

------
patdennis
I eat sleep and breathe politics. It's what I do for a living, and it's most
of what I care about.

That said, I don't come here to read about politics.

------
rpicard
Yes! Over the past several months I've found myself wishing that I was in a
better position to launch a site that is solely for tech links.

------
beaker52
I think it should be left to the will of the upvote.

If people want to upvote it, they shall.

~~~
davidw
So if a bunch of Justin Bieber fans join HN and start voting - in the 1000's -
every article about their idol, that's cool?

------
patrickwiseman
It's been a much more acute phenomenon lately, but that's what I'd expect when
there is an onslaught of stories that are going to upset hackers.

------
swehner
"One of the most admirable things about hackers is their ability to accomplish
great things without - or in spite of government. The recent preoccupation is
a bit sad. Great minds could be focused on better things." What, what, what?
Better things?

------
jlengrand
And I would be even more precise : US based political news.

------
PavlovsCat
Oh yeah, more articles about Bootstrap 3 please. I hear it got released or
something, and it has flat buttons.

 _Great minds could be focused on better things._

For that, great minds would first need to stop patting themselves on the back,
and be concerned about more than what's on their desk or in their bank
accounts. Supposedly great minds built drones and surveillance technology the
not so great minds get to clean up after. Oh so great minds are giving
politicians who can hardly spell "web" correctly these fantastic toys
because... hmmm, why, actually?

Maybe it would help if you defined "great mind" first? Consider Einstein,
Russell or Chomsky, for example. Consider Socrates or just about anyone... If
they had two brain cells to rub together, chances are good they cared about
politics. Saying that politics doesn't have any place on HN is itself a
political stance in a way, and it's hardly like all stories are about politics
now.. we simply have those, too. What's so horrible about that? What kind of
fucked up beauty sleep does it disturb?

~~~
PavlovsCat
Then define "great mind", define "better things"; put your mouth where your
downvotes are.

~~~
DanBC
Are you asking why you got downvotes?

I don't know, but perhaps it's because of tone.

> _Oh yeah, more articles about Bootstrap 3 please. I hear it got released or
> something, and it has flat buttons._

There are different ways of saying that. The way you said it isn't awful, but
it is adversarial.

You then have a weirdly aggressive paragraph about people patting themselves
on the back while delivering toys to politicians, which misses the point that
many people don't deliver those toys to politicians, they specifically opted-
out of military or defence work.

Your final paragraph is, again, weirdly combative.

> _What 's so horrible about that? What kind of fucked up beauty sleep does it
> disturb?_

Someone suggests that there are too many political articles on HN, and that it
has affected the tone of the site. To respond like that is an excellent
demonstration of the problem.

Your next post, asking people to put their mouths where their downvotes are,
seems to indicate that you don't think the problem is with your posts, but
with the idiots who don't understand you and who just downvote rather than
discussing.

~~~
PavlovsCat
_I don 't know, but perhaps it's because of tone._

Ah okay, I just wanted to makes sure it wasn't something more substantial. (
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Graham's_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg
huh )

 _There are different ways of saying that. The way you said it isn 't awful,
but it is adversarial._

So pompousness about how "great minds" should have "better things" to do than
care about politics is okay, injecting some reality into that isn't? If you
don't notice such self-congratulary fluff, of course you'll find a response to
it "weirdly aggressive and combative". If you don't consider the initial post
adversarial, then of course my response must seem weird to you.

It's not that I want to pick on Bootstrap, that was just one example of a lot
I could have made. The very concept of making a CSS framework might be a "new
idea", the very first implementation of that idea is already kinda pedestrian,
but further releases, or the 50th CSS framework? Not new, not intellectually
stimulating. And you know what? I don't usually complain about any of that,
ever, much less making submissions about it; _until_ someone says that having
like 5-10% politics is just too much, that "great minds" can do better. Then I
mention it, because the disconnect is just too glaring to ignore.

 _You then have a weirdly aggressive paragraph about people patting themselves
on the back while delivering toys to politicians, which misses the point that
many people don 't deliver those toys to politicians, they specifically opted-
out of military or defence work._

Which in turn misses the point that many people did NOT opt out, which is why
we're talking about this now.

 _Your next post, asking people to put their mouths where their downvotes are,
seems to indicate that you don 't think the problem is with your posts, but
with the idiots who don't understand you and who just downvote rather than
discussing._

Oh, so it's post _s_ now, and _you_ calling other people idiots on my behalf
makes _my_ posts "weirdly aggressive"? Good thing I don't get to act as some
kind of scapegoat. And how is just downvoting instead of discussing not the
equivalent of tone? How is it not way below that even? None of this adds up.

But sure, I don't eat chalk, I don't say "great job!" when I see a turd, and I
don't care about the downvotes themselves; I just prefer their reasons
mirrored into the medium of text where they are actually visible and can be
responded to.

Still not a single word on what a "great mind" is, and what "better things"
they have to discuss. Oh well.

