
Ask HN: Is There a Hacker News Equivalent for Politics? - CM30
Or heck, just about any sort of forum you can discuss the subject that isn&#x27;t filled with idiots, flame wars and fights about every little thing?<p>Because the signal to noise level at most political forums and subreddits I&#x27;ve seen is ridiculous, and I feel it&#x27;d be neat to find somewhere you can talk about politics and society in a more reasonable way instead.
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wh-uws
That would be hard to make. And if you find a solid one let me know I'm
passively looking myself.

Why do I say it would be hard to make?

I came up with this thought about politics and religion specifically years ago
that I think still holds true.

"It's hard to get people to think their way [around] positions they never
really thought their way into"

Most people come by their politics by assimilating their family or
communities, especially in college, and never really think to question.

It becomes a deep part of their identity.

And if you question their politics it's as if you are insulting them.

It's hard to have a solid conversation about a subject when both sides feel
constantly personally attacked...

It's very hard to remove that element and speak clearly about ideas on their
own merits.

~~~
rectangleboy
> Most people come by their politics by assimilating their family or
> communities, especially in college . . .

I, without a doubt, formed my opinions largely because of my family (against
my moderately-strong conservative family), not that much because of my
community (my high school friends had very neutral political leanings), and
definitely prior to college (high school).

I feel that many opinions are formed by high school friend groups and rarely
questioned beyond that and that community is only important in generally
shaping that high school exposure and experience.

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squidfood
I've been a long-time member of a smallish but active forum (I won't post the
address, maybe several hundred regulars). We've had very rational discussions
and good exchanges of views between (U.S.) left and right in the 15 years I've
participated.

However, since the presidential election, things have devolved into sheer
anger. On the right, it's defending indefensible behavior (IMO, obviously). On
the left, it's grasping more and more ridiculous legal theories and
overreacting to trivial culture-war provocations. On both sides, the tit-for-
tat has increased exponentially.

This forum has some very rational people who (outside of the politics threads)
are very intelligent and sane on many subjects. The fact that this group can't
manage it tells me that right now, I don't think anyone can.

------
techsupporter
In my experience, Metafilter has excellent moderation, particularly around
politics threads as of late.

~~~
joezydeco
Seconding Metafilter. Reading the "current politics" thread can be a firehose
compared to topic-based breakdowns that Reddit has, but it's still an order of
magnitude more intelligent. The moderators are the key to making that happen.

------
pushcx
I'm not aware of one, but the Lobsters codebase with very similar
functionality is available if you'd like to start one:
[https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters](https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters)

You can get help in #lobsters on Freenode. If you know Rails, deploying to
Heroku is an afternoon job; using the provided ansible scripts on a bare VPS
is a day or two.

I'd strongly recommend checking out the moderation at
[https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview](https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview).
They deal with difficult political topics on a daily basis and generally have
very high-quality discussion.

------
canadaduane
I think
[https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/)
does a pretty good job.

------
downandout
Unfortunately, given how polarized the political landscape is today, if you
don't want to see fights/flame wars, you'll have to choose a side, and then go
to an echo chamber for that side. Your definition of "filled with idiots" will
differ greatly from those who disagree with you politically, and vice versa.
That's not to say that echo chambers are healthy - in fact, they are quite the
opposite. But anywhere that political ideologies clash, fights/what you will
view as idiocy/flame wars will exist.

There are plenty of such echo chambers available for both liberals and
conservatives. Facebook is the most obvious one. Twitter is another, if you
follow people aligned with your ideology. CNN and MSNBC offer almost
exclusively liberal slants on the news of the day and will quickly satisfy any
desire you have to hear liberal echoes, while Fox News is a largely
conservative echo chamber. As far as forums, liberals might go here [1] for
example, while conservatives might go here [2].

[1] [https://www.liberalforum.org/](https://www.liberalforum.org/)

[2] [http://www.conservativesforum.com/](http://www.conservativesforum.com/)

------
hackandtrip
There are really low-noise and well monitored sub on reddit, where the scope
of their information is limited. An example, to talk and share news about
Syrian situation,
[https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar](https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar)
is an amazing neutral space.

------
matt_s
To what end? Honestly ask yourself about when the last time was where you were
convinced to change your mind on something in an internet forum.

A site like that would be filled with the programmer equivalent of vim vs
emacs.

In a subject like politics, there isn't anywhere for 'the middle' to go
discuss things rationally. By 'the middle' I mean people that may be
affiliated with a party (or not) and aren't gung-ho about everything that
party aligns with. That might actually be a neat name for it... get people to
come together and see "the other side" from "the middle".

Okay I answered my own question about "to what end?" \- to get people talking
with each other online instead of shouting into echo chambers like FB,
Twitter, Reddit, etc.

It would be neat to have a strongly moderated (no content trolls), strong
account policy forum to go to.

------
thisisit
> signal to noise level at most political forums and subreddits I've seen is
> ridiculous

Welcome to the internet!

Any forum based medium will and should allow for dissenting opinions. Even
some bordering on what you might consider idiotic. It is easy to bait people
into a fight specially when you call them wrong. So, you will see lots of
troll behavior and ensuing fights. And with time lots and lots of flamewar.

------
cm2012
reddit.com/r/politicaldiscussion always has measured and thoughtful threads.

------
joveian
I think you have a few options, depending on what you are looking for and what
you are already doing.

1) Look for local options (city and state level in the US, or even
neighborhood level sometimes), and particularly on focused but not too focused
areas. I've come across good local transportation oriented forums and I would
guess there are decent local forums for things like education, foster care,
environment, and health care. One of the better ways of getting information is
via people who are on various advisory committes, so look for forums that
those people participate in. I've also heard that it can be fairly easy to get
on one of those committes yourself. Maybe twelve years ago or so I found the
Pittsburgh Policy Issues Online Forum when I lived in Pittsburgh that was set
up by the current mayor (Bill Peduto), who was then a city council member. He
didn't participate himself and I wasn't super impressed at the time but in
retrospect even having a few people in city government posting occasional
responses about details of particular issues was better than almost anything
else I've seen. Now almost all traces of its existance have been removed from
the web (searchable web at least). I've wondered what the people running it
thought of the experience.

2) Forcasting, detailed discussions aimed at predicting what will actually
happen rather than what should happen. Look at Good Jugdement Open:

[https://www.gjopen.com/](https://www.gjopen.com/)

3) Forget online discussion and make friends with a journalist and/or find
local groups. I think in general the closer you get to particular current
issues (and the people actually making the decisions) the more the discussion
is restrained by the current political environment in that particular area,
but also the more detail you get. I've heard that it can be shockingly easy to
have a direct impact on local politics outside of areas that powerful
interests care most about.

4) There might be better discussions hiding behind the key word "ethics" or
something similar rather than politics directly. In a way you can split
politics into a) the details of things like what is required to make
particular policy changes and what are the likely or actual results of such a
change and b) what should the goals be. For b, you are likely to get a better
discussion if it is mostly removed from current politics.

5) Put less effort into finding discussion opportunities and more effort into
finding people writing with more detailed perspectives. Some journalists go
into much more detail than others. These days lots of people previously
involved in politics have blogs and some write in detail. It is easier to
track down a bunch of interesting writers individually than a forum. Sometimes
those blogs have comment areas that are decent or you could start your own
politics blog. Also, published books can be a great source of information due
to the longer write/edit/print cycle and authors being selected more for long
term interest and expertise.

Edit: Also, look for multiple perspectives on history. In addition to history
being generally important in politics, you can often find detailed discussions
of what are now heated political issues.

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RickJWagner
Also: Is there a 'Hacker News' with less politics and politically motivated
voting? Please?

