
HN mods, can we please reinstate the “no politics” rule? - seertaak
Dear mods: can we reinstate the no politics rule, please? I know I could just ignore threads with political content, but for some idiotic reason I can&#x27;t seem to help myself from peering into and contributing to these pointless debates where everyone essentially preaches to the choir and comes out feeling frustrated and angry at the other side&#x27;s stupidity&#x2F;ignorance&#x2F;dishonesty&#x2F;corruption.<p>So I propose we, as a community, all agree to talk -- and argue! -- about the stuff which we <i>all</i> genuinely love. We love tech. We love programming languages. We love hardware. We love philosophy, as long as it&#x27;s not too political. We love physics, and science more generally. We love music theory. Our interests are deep and diverse.<p>We are <i>hackers</i> -- not politicos! I say let&#x27;s rally around that, and prove to the wider world that in at least one online community, we can step above the puerile name calling. The hacker community has attained a certain status, through our immense collective success. The world now watches what we do. Let&#x27;s not blow it.<p>So let&#x27;s practice some self-restraint. You, the mods, are the guardians of this community, and to date you&#x27;ve done a damn fine job. Be brave, and nip these corrosive political threads in the bud.
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MrZongle2
I prefer a politics-lite HN but as was discussed during the previous
experiment, it's sometimes difficult to draw a line between what is political
and what is not. I think the mods would be in a no-win situation were the
moratorium repeated.

However, perhaps there's another solution.

If a "flag as political" capability were added to HN, along with the ability
for users to show/hide political-flagged threads, it seems to me that users
and the community as a whole could do most of the heavy lifting.

I realize that this raises the possibility for _other_ flags (e.g. "can we
have one just for X, so we don't have to see Y?") and with every supposedly
simple modification there can be a legion of convoluted behind-the-scenes
changes required; I hope I don't seem to be implying that such a change would
be trivial. But perhaps in the interest of keeping the mods' workload down and
discussions a tad more civil during what may be a particularly contentious
next four years, it should be seriously considered.

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savethefuture
Off topic articles should be treated as Off topic articles, and removed. There
should not be any need to update any system or change anything, just enforce
the rules. This website is called Hacker News for a reason. Not Political
News.

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MrZongle2
An intersection of the political and the technical is not that unusual: PE
Trump's meeting with industry leaders back in December is one such example.
Likewise, the ongoing Manning & Snowden sagas tread ground in both
territories. These are subjects that don't necessarily qualify as "off topic",
but aren't as solidly technical as, say, announcement of a new Rust release or
a disclosed software vulnerability.

~~~
savethefuture
Like everything else, not everything will be perfect and mistakes will happen.
Fine line articles are of course a grey area for the "off topic" rule but at
least give us some semblance of maintaining the rules. For example, the few
weeks before the election were total chaos, we should strive to not reach that
point of political take over again.

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kup0
I can see it from both sides.

On one hand, it's nice to have a place where politics is less-commonly
discussed and where the focus can be on tech.

On the other hand, some of the most in-depth, interesting comments I've seen
on political situations and views, I've seen on HN, comments that have made me
seriously think. When HNers remain civil and just have thorough discussion on
a political topic, I enjoy it. The problem is not letting it turn into a
flamewar, and politics is one of those subjects that attracts emotional
responses.

Then, finally, is the difficulty in determining what constitutes "politics",
as politics intersects with technology all the time.

HN mods will draw the line, and then all we'll do is argue about where the
line should be. Problem will not be solved, just moved.

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itg
It's easy to avoid the threads. More annoying is the passive-aggressive
political comments on a story that has nothing to do with politics.

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ocdtrekkie
I think the largest issue that tended to get in the way of this (because
technically the rules still indicate politics is "off-topic") is the challenge
of deciding where tech stops and politics begins, when topics like net
neutrality and trade laws with copyright effects get involved. Or the
difference between talk about solar startups and climate change deniers.

I personally don't think it's too hard to allow those grey areas a bit, but
push away from political topics that don't have tech implications at all, but
I think the moderators may have disagreed.

I did truly enjoy the political detox week. I'd like to see it back on
occasion maybe. Especially right after elections.

~~~
savethefuture
I agree, the political detox week was fantastic. We went from a flood of
political toxicity to a normal stream of tech/hacker related content again,
revealing the stress of politics. I do not come to this website to read about
what Trump said on twitter, or what Hillary had lied about. I come here to
read about latest tech trends and "Hacker News", and that should be enforced
to keep people like me returning.

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mindcrime
I couldn't agree more. The no-politics period was a breath of fresh air.

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andrewclunn
One of the things I appreciate about this community is that occasionally a
well informed post with links to relevant information will crop up, even in
political topics. Just don't read them. If they're nothing more than click-
bait intending to insight a flame war, then they tend to get flagged anyways.
About the only bad thing is when a link seems to get upvoted based on title
alone (by people who clearly haven't read it), but that's not isolated to
political topics and articles.

