It’s plainly against the rules of the site to post political stories, other than a few exceptions:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon… If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I flag most politics, too (not the legitimately interesting think pieces… I’m talking about the day-to-day DC noise).
I don’t want this place to turn into the front page of Reddit or Facebook - outrage bait news stories and sensational half-truth political headlines to generate engagement. This is a unique space, as the article mentions, and I think it’s so interesting to engage with people here. I want to hang onto that.
Over time, if we’re not careful, this could end up being overrun by: “You won’t believe what Chuck Schumer Tweeted about TRUMP’s latest executive order!!”
I flag all articles on politics, but not because of the rules... It's because they consistently turn into flame wars. Every single article on US politics, without fail, will have people flagrantly violating the site rules by just being hateful to whichever party they dislike. I used to get in there and flag comments to try to help combat the problem, but it got to be too much. Now I just flag the entire article because the discussions are always such low quality.
Please, try to start flagging comments again! I've found that a lot of flamewar-creating comments are just one flag away from being killed. A few minutes does a lot to help the culture, and you can almost always find a few high-quality, thoughtful comments in the flamewar as you scroll through.
>> It’s plainly against the rules of the site to post political stories
You seem to be new here, but this is easily misinterpreted by regulars as well: what you are referring to are not rules, they are guidelines. It says so "plainly": https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is an important distinction especially for the bit you quoted, because what is old and uninteresting to some is new and interesting to others. This subjectivity is why it is not necessarily in the community's best interest to flag politics stories; when you do it, you're acting based on your own preferences, and you're robbing others of an opportunity to learn something new.
That's an emotionally manipulative way of dismissing their points that doesn't contribute to your argument, or to the site in general.
> what you are referring to are not rules, they are guidelines
That's semantics. When the "guidelines" are regularly adjusted, and when users are chastised or banned by the mods for not following them (even if not to the letter, but to the spirit of the law), then they are effectively rules.
> because what is old and uninteresting to some is new and interesting to others.
> you're robbing others of an opportunity to learn something new
The scope of HN is not "everything that is new and interesting", nor is the point to "give others an opportunity to learn something new". The guidelines, and moderators, are pretty clear that there are new and interesting stories that are off-topic because they veer into mainstream political news territory that invariably leads into flamewars that degrade the quality of the site.
There is a very good reason that politics are strongly discouraged/forbidden in the guidelines, and that users (including me) actively flag those posts: because that kind of discussion actively erodes and polarizes the community.
> when you do it, you're acting based on your own preferences
No, we're acting based on a basic understanding of human nature and experience with what happens when political stories make it through.
The fact that you weren't able to answer Esophagus4's points and data in the other comment shows that your position isn't defensible.
I'm late to this but I figure it's worth replying to if only to not leave the record uncorrected.
> So yes, the scope of HN is quite literally anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity, which for a lot of people involves political topics. Therefore, one is indeed doing those users a great disservice by flagging such stories.
There's a big difference between discussing a topic in the spirit of intellectual curiosity vs ideological battle. One can try to characterise the latter as the former as a way to justify anything as being within HN's scope, but it's quite easy for objective observers to see the difference in the way someone conducts themselves. Stories are off-topic on HN if most of the interest in those topics is from people who want to engage in ideological battle about that topic.
Also, re. this:
> I have no idea why I'm getting into this argument with a throwaway who might very well be a sockpuppet, but what the hell, let's do it
Please don't be snarky in response to another user who had posted a perfectly legitimate comment. Their account has been active for over four years and has > 3500 karma, so they're clearly an established and valued contributor to HN.
I’ll ignore the slight about “you must be new here,” but I don’t flag all political stories, just the ones that are high-noise, low-signal.
But rather than arguing in the abstract, let’s look at the data. Here’s what I’ve flagged recently:
> Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agreeing new rules
> State Department Revokes Visas over Charlie Kirk Comments
> Rand Paul: FCC chair had "no business" intervening in ABC/Kimmel controversy
> Yes, Jimmy Kimmel's suspension was government censorship
> Tylenol-maker shares hit after report RFK Jr will suggest autism link
Each of those you can find on any other outrage-based pseudo-news site across the internet: Twitter will be in echo chamber flame wars over them, CNN will be in breaking news mode, NYT, WSJ, and the Washington Post will cover them, Reddit and Facebook and Instagram will push them…
Are those the stories you’re really fighting to keep on here? Do you have objections to me flagging any of those? Who am I depriving of an opportunity to learn about those rare, insightful pieces?
(And by the way, 3/5 of those were flagged by the community as well. So it seems like the community agrees with me more than it disagrees.)
When someone responds to a post with data and arguments with a condescending remark and no refutations, it's an admission that they lost the argument. Thank you for taking the time to find the data!
Flagging ability is scaled - it takes multiple "regular users" with flag privileges to raise a [flag] and further more to tip posts to [dead] (there are other paths to [dead]).
Some users are granted 'instant' [flag] -> [dead] privileges (if they consistently only flag obvious spam), their work is looked at, if they start showing a bias that ability is degraded.
Part of the moderation task at HN is weighting user feedback by looking at individual behaviour.
Even if it takes multiple flags to kill an article, that's still vulnerable to brigading. So it takes 10 flags to censor a topic instead of 1? Fine, me and my 9 sockpuppet accounts will flag the article. Or just 10 like-minded people independently deciding to abuse flag as a mega-downvote.
Two changes to flagging would really improve it, and cause it to not be used casually as a mega-downvote: 1. Flag-powered users should only get like 1-2 flags a week. 2. Flagging should be attributable back to the user who flagged it. If you feel you're doing the site a good service by flagging trash articles, then you should have no problem with publicly linking your name to the flagging action.
> Even if it takes multiple flags to kill an article, that's still vulnerable to brigading. So it takes 10 flags to censor a topic instead of 1? Fine, me and my 9 sockpuppet accounts will flag the article.
That's just an argument against sockpuppet accounts, and for detection and removal of those accounts.
> Or just 10 like-minded people independently deciding to abuse flag as a mega-downvote.
That's known as "user moderation" or possibly a "democratic system" if you consider the number of flaggers alone, which is a good thing; or if you're concerned about instead the incorrect usage of the flag tool: as stated above, the mods already look for and occasionally take away flagging privileges. So this isn't a problem.
> 1. Flag-powered users should only get like 1-2 flags a week.
Given that I see several flag-worthy stories and several dozen flag-worthy comments a day, this is a terrible proposal.
> 2. Flagging should be attributable back to the user who flagged it.
This is also a bad idea, because there are many bad actors who will still abuse that information, regardless of whether or not you're using the tool as intended. This proposal seems like it's designed to facilitate that abuse.
An actually good proposal is that the mods should be more aggressive about monitoring and either promoting or taking away flagging privileges.
