On: NBC calls it for Barack Obama

[Xcelerate]

Ask yourself: is this really intellectually stimulating?

Quotes from the guidelines:

On-Topic: If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

[hack_edu → Xcelerate]

US public policy is an incredibly important factor to the global technical industry; this includes arguably most 'hackers.' That cannot be denied.

[jlarocco → hack_edu]

That argument could be made for almost anything.

All hackers eat, so clearly HN needs more articles about the food industry...

Anybody who cares about the election already saw this on a million other sites, no point posting it here.

[davorak → hack_edu]

Sure, but they are more then likely to get that news from some other media source since it is so common and important.

I would have found it more productive if a well written article explaining now that the election has been called how Obama reelection will effect the technical industry was linked.

[notatoad → Xcelerate]

It probably isn't really proper HN content. But is it really worth complaining about? It was inevitable that the results would be posted here.

[Xcelerate → notatoad]

Yes, but you don't really see the ~200 other countries' election/decision results on here. Why does the US get special treatment? (It's a serious question, so please don't downvote me.)

[jtemplestein → Xcelerate]

Because a large portion of both the tech industry and HN audience resides in the US.

[davorak → Xcelerate]

I agree the post did not follow the guide lines and it would have been possible to achieve the same result and link to a better article explaining the impact Obama will have on the tech industry.

The US get special treatment for the same reason that many people consider the US President to be the most powerful person in the world. The US President's decisions effect the whole world on a scale which is considerable larger then the leaders of many of the other ~200 countries for better or worse.

[thezoid → Xcelerate]

One could say there's a lot of content on this site that isn't intellectually stimulating.

> Off-Topic: If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

I recall seeing a top voted article about a somewhat recently deceased CEO on the front page. I'd hardly consider that On-Topic according to that sentence.

Just like a real democracy, just because you don't agree with popular opinion doesn't invalidate it.

[Xcelerate → thezoid]

True, but you can sway it if you present a compelling argument.

[zanny → Xcelerate]

Because HN uses a story upvote system, even if you took down off topic "mainstream" news like this over and over, people would keep massively upvoting new instances to the top, because the general thought process is "I wanna go see what HN thinks about trending topic X!" and they upvote the first instance of it they see, and make it otherwise.

[davorak → zanny]

Even worse in my opinion is that the poster is incentivized to post quickly encouraging the poster to post the first story covering topics like this rather then taking the time to find a well written and insightful article.