Comment by sph
3 months ago
The post linked has been removed, so I don't know what more we can speculate upon, 650+ comments in.
It's strange to see HN mods allow this much attention to a political, and contentious issue.
3 months ago
The post linked has been removed, so I don't know what more we can speculate upon, 650+ comments in.
It's strange to see HN mods allow this much attention to a political, and contentious issue.
I don't think "appetite to discuss" should be a justification to override the guidelines against political submissions and discussion. There is far too much politics on HN and it leaks into unrelated discussions too. There are plenty of other places to discuss politics on the internet.
The guidelines say that most political articles are offtopic. Most != all. The question is what should be in the setdiff of all - most.
About that, there are lots of past explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48724830 in this thread
I'm aware of what you've said about this in the past. I'm expressing my disagreement. HN would be improved dramatically by a significant change in where this line is drawn.
1 reply →
The comment from the other Mullvad founder is here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800
What has been removed? The links I saw didn't have much information but as far as I can tell they're still up.
From an HN point of view the idea is to give the discussion a place, since the community obviously wants to have it.
The Mastodon post itself. I get a 404 error. It was fine when this reached the frontpage yesterday or when was it. Looks like the author deleted it.
EDIT: nvm it's rate limited
> From an HN point of view the idea is to give the discussion a place, since the community obviously wants to have it
So where do you draw the line?
Just this week I saw multiple offtopic Epstein schizoposts by 10+ year old accounts that were alternately flagged and vouched. Should we allow that too?
My takeaway is this is a highly politically charged rant on a niche social media site — exactly the kind of discussion we're meant to avoid.
Things are rotten below ground and you give an inch, they'll want a mile.
We try to draw the line according to principles that I've explained many times over the years. If you scroll back through the comments, for example, at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so..., you'll find them. If you read some of those and then still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Btw, I'm not claiming that we make every individual call correctly - that's an undecidable question anyhow since everyone will have their own evaluation of "correctly". But at the more general level of what principles to apply, I do think there's a certain consistency: they've been the same for many years, and we do our (fallible) best to follow them.
Well the title already says most of it, doesn't it?
I'm also surprised. Usually opinions opposing the far right are removed from HN.
Wait what? I see the exact opposite, and what is the 'far right'? You mean anything republican/conservative?
[flagged]
The guidelines still apply here. Comments that are inflammatory should be flagged/killed and repeat/egregious offenders should be banned.
In the case of your past account: we happily unban accounts when people establish a track record of contributing positively. We don’t hold grudges and indeed we welcome it when users reform their style of participation.
How does someone show a track record of contributing positively if they are banned?
1 reply →