Again, there's no way to contact you personally regarding this really off-topic thread, so I'll reply here.
I'll agree with you that there is an unfortunate rise in the amount of politically charged rhetoric lately, but I really don't care for navel gazing (which I think is a far more unfortunate result of online communities in their adolescence). However, I don't really think that this article "in no way piqued anyone's intellectual curiosity, but instead triggered political feelings." ... I'm not quite sure how "intellectual" curiosity differs from normal curiosity, but can you honestly say that there wasn't a single person who didn't find the article interesting enough to say, 'Hey, what this guy said was interesting! I'd like to investigate this issue further.'
>>Things that are there for the purpose of intellectual intrigue do not have rallying cries for redistribution in bold as their first sentence, for example.
Intellectual intrigue? Was there a thought crime committed here? Joking aside, you can't fault any author for trying to promote their work. Self promotion -- and the prominence of the self promotion -- doesn't say anything about the quality of the content.
>> Also, I've observed the upvote vs. flag mechanism working for several years now. I agree that it does work in general. I posted this because I believe it is somewhat breaking down lately, in the form of political rallying cries reaching the front page.
Again, this is a conversation you and I should be having. It's a great reason to add some sort of way to contact you personally -- there's no reason anyone else should have to read our meta-HN conversation.
That being said -- what does a comment that essentially amounts to a downvote + flag add to the discussion?
- You obviously don't care for the article
- You didn't add anything constructive OR critical
I mean, honestly, I can't believe I've been typing for two minutes about this.
In general, it's true that excess meta-discussion is boring and annoying, and I haven't participated in very many meta-discussions since my HN-reddit-noob period. At some point, though, when things pass a threshold, I believe it's okay to say something.
Moreover, I believe that while this thread is not on the topic of the post, it is at least somewhat interesting topic to talk about, and is unlikely to be discussed elsewhere.
For this reason, I don't think it would be better for us to communicate privately, and feel fortunate that it never occurred to me to put my email in my profile.
Anyway, to me, the difference between curiosity and intellectual curiosity is the motivation behind it. A televangelist who discovers YouTube is not curious about how to use YouTube because he likes to figure out how things work; he is curious because he would like more ways to evangelize. Similarly, someone who upvoted this post is likely not intellectually curious about the phenomena involved; he's likely instead curious about how best to further his cause (which in this case is civil liberties). So, interested, yes, intellectual curiosity piqued, no.
Also, I'm not faulting the blogger. The blogger is a blogger; he blogs. I'm faulting the editors for not killing this, because it doesn't add content; it adds rallying cry.
I'll agree with you that there is an unfortunate rise in the amount of politically charged rhetoric lately, but I really don't care for navel gazing (which I think is a far more unfortunate result of online communities in their adolescence). However, I don't really think that this article "in no way piqued anyone's intellectual curiosity, but instead triggered political feelings." ... I'm not quite sure how "intellectual" curiosity differs from normal curiosity, but can you honestly say that there wasn't a single person who didn't find the article interesting enough to say, 'Hey, what this guy said was interesting! I'd like to investigate this issue further.'
>>Things that are there for the purpose of intellectual intrigue do not have rallying cries for redistribution in bold as their first sentence, for example.
Intellectual intrigue? Was there a thought crime committed here? Joking aside, you can't fault any author for trying to promote their work. Self promotion -- and the prominence of the self promotion -- doesn't say anything about the quality of the content.
>> Also, I've observed the upvote vs. flag mechanism working for several years now. I agree that it does work in general. I posted this because I believe it is somewhat breaking down lately, in the form of political rallying cries reaching the front page.
Again, this is a conversation you and I should be having. It's a great reason to add some sort of way to contact you personally -- there's no reason anyone else should have to read our meta-HN conversation.
That being said -- what does a comment that essentially amounts to a downvote + flag add to the discussion?
- You obviously don't care for the article
- You didn't add anything constructive OR critical
I mean, honestly, I can't believe I've been typing for two minutes about this.