

What should be considered off-topic? - rms

Many have said that we need more explicit guidelines about what is off-topic. What do you think should be off-topic on news.ycombinator.com?
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rms
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44000>

My thread about optimal governance had a lot of complaints. Many people think
that such discussions shouldn't be allowed and I disagree. The thread was more
about economics than politics. It wasn't anywhere close to the day to day
politics covered on the tv news. There is no evidence of this site turning
into reddit, except for the people claiming it has. Why disallow this
discussion?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Maybe this is just me, but I come to this site to see new stuff and then read
discussions about the current and eventual implications of that new stuff. In
ask news.yc threads, I am looking for either new ideas posed as questions or
people that really need advice.

What I don't want to see is the rehashing of age-old discussions or endless
arguments where no one is going to change their minds. I think your post was
an example of both. "What services would the perfect government provide?" I
mean seriously, where is that going to go besides get people to write out
their entrenched positions and defend them ad infinitum? If people want to
read the arguments about different types of government they can go to
wikipedia.

I take your point in that it hasn't changed that much yet here. However, if
you can nip it in the bud initially you might prevent a slow eventual
migration to something you don't want. Hence the suggestion of guidelines
displayed on the submit page.

~~~
pg
There often turn out to be new things you can say about age-old topics. And
the smartest people are willing to change their minds about anything. So I
don't think we should avoid topics simply because people have said a lot of
stupid things about them in the past.

~~~
mdakin
The key to getting positive insights out of controversial topics is to raise
quality of the discussions rather than to censor them. My instinct was to
agree with epi0Bauqu but one of the few stories I've upvoted after reading in
the past day concerned both religion and politics [1]. This contradiction had
been bothering me. But the situation is much more clear to me now.

An important goal for a community like this is to minimize or eliminate low
quality, frustrating patterns of discussion. One can eliminate such patterns
by censoring the topics that often lead to the discussions or by changing the
culture of the group so that the problematic discussions are minimized.

The posting of libertarian/socialist/etc. aphorisms under the guise of an
economic discussion should be discouraged. A relevant aspect of economics is
that most interesting economic discussions rely on mathematics or at least a
qualitative reference to a mathematical argument. If an intense economic
discussion lacks such references it is almost certainly a low quality
discussion.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44184>

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Heh, I actually agree with your basic premise that it is better to make
detailed and incremental tweaks than use the blunt instrument of wholesale
censorship. This whole argument is somewhat ironic too because I like policy
discussions and at least once enjoyed religious ones. (After all, I went out
and earned a masters degree in Technology & Policy on my own volition and have
written religious articles.)

What it comes down to for me, is that I am just heavily skeptical that raising
the quality of these discussions to an acceptably interesting level in a
relatively open online forum can be done, and so I have been advocating
censorship instead. I hope I am wrong.

~~~
mdakin
I think the key to making this work without censorship is ruthless
downmoderation of low quality, uninterrsting, and annoying discussions. I am
often hesitant to downmod but this is the tool that we have to shape the
culture. If enough of us who care about having nondogmatic discussions start
downmodding the situation might take care of itself.

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epi0Bauqu
Off topic (imo): old stuff, politics, religion.

~~~
staunch
I'm not sure about old stuff. I think rehashing old topics can be very
interesting. You often learn something new about them. Reddit has never been
strictly "news", even in its heyday.

Politics and religion are special, they're just such huge topics and they're
so personal to people. There's a reason people don't discuss these topics in
business much. They're big distractions from the many things we _all_ have in
common.

I hope there's a ban on purely political and/or religious topics. This isn't
censorship: 1) It's not done by the government. 2) The purpose is maintain
focus, not suppress ideas.

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aswanson
Anything gaming related (Playstation, Xbox etc.). Doing a gaming startup?
Fine, post. Found some crack codes or new screen shots, karma should be put
under assault by everyone.

