All: toxic threads like the one below are the reason why we're going to try an experiment called "Political Detox Week" on Hacker News.
For one week, starting Monday, all political stories and threads will be off topic. We'll kill them when we see them and ask users to flag them. Then we'll see what happens.
When you say "all", make sure you follow through. But I don't know how you're going to distinguish between politics and 'current events'. In any case, US news seems to always take precedence over anyone else in the world.
That's what I meant exactly. When it comes to US news and big events, HN forgets all its policies. If the policy is "all" then stick with the principles, or else it doesn't work.
Thats really unfortunate, given that there's an Austrian presidential election tomorrow, as well as Italian constitutional referendum. Would it be possible to allow just one story about each Monday mirning? You can kill it by the time US awakens...
I'm sorry to reply with exactly the opposite of what you were hoping for, but that information makes me think that it will be an even better week to do this, as the experiment will be more meaningful.
I lurk and occasionally interact here, but this made me kinda concerned so I figured I'd reply. Not sure if this is the appropriate place for feedback (If it isn't, sorry in advance!) But just my 2¢: I personally don't think this is a good idea, both in principle and because of the practical consequences. Politics and software development/hacker culture/startups frequently overlap (user privacy, patents, open data/governments, just to name a few examples) plus the moderation team will be forced to come up with an official definition of what is politics and what isn't for the sake of enforcing rule. Since this is clearly subjective, users will start arguing over the definition, and every time a thread is on a "gray area" and get's flagged/doesn't get flagged people will get upset and fight over that instead.
Wouldn't it be much better to simply introduce a flagging system for "toxic" discussions (since clearly they can and do start from other, more mundane subjects, e.g vim/emacs) Then whoever doesn't like them can simply filter them out?
I personally try to be as non-toxic as possible in my remarks, since I feel like that prompts way more useful discussion, but I don't mind/don't care if discussions become toxic (since the original news might still be relevant/interesting, and it's really hard for the comments to be 100% toxic), and I believe at least some people are like me in that regard. I also understand other people might think different too, so a filter could be a nice compromise?
Thanks for the thoughts, and especially for being non-toxic in your remarks! If only everyone would do that.
Yes, some stories of core interest to this community have political aspects, but those aren't the kind we're going to kill. The concern here is pure politics: the things that get people flaming about party, ideology, nation, race, and religion. A news story about patents or encryption isn't going to have a problem on HN (though a rant may).
You're right that we can't precisely define politics. But this is nothing new. The site guidelines talk about politics without defining them, and we get by. Moderation has a few core principles and the rest is case-by-case judgment calls.
Re flagging systems: HN has got one, but it has proven insufficient to solve the problem of people hurling rocks and feces at each other when the political drugs take hold.
Re filtering out: it's in HN's DNA that everyone sees the same site. Also, if we quarantine political flamewars in their own section, we still have to maintain that section. Few people who appreciate what HN is really for—stories that gratify intellectual curiosity—would go there, making the degeneration worse. The users who primarily want that kind of a site are not the ones we feel most strongly about serving, and conversely, those users really want a different kind of site than HN. That's fair, but we need to clarify what HN is and isn't. We're trying to avoid scorched earth here.
I appreciate that you don't mind the toxicity so much. That makes sense and part of me feels the same way. But the effects we're concerned with are systemic ones on the community as a whole, and there it's a different matter. The culture has a low and sensitive tolerance for toxicity, not a high one. As the culture degrades, the best people slowly leave, and then not so slowly. Meanwhile their replacements show up with wheelbarrows of rocks and feces. That is how open communities on the internet die, and not letting it happen is our top responsibility.
Don't forget that we're talking about an experiment for one week, just to see what happens. If you have any observations about what happens, please share them with us. We don't have a fixed opinion about this.
It really baffles me how the Muslim world turns its back on extremism and radicalization. Devout Muslims claim that Islamic extremists aren't real Muslims and just shrug it off. Wrong. They are a growing minority of Muslims whether you like it or not and Muslims need to deal with this plague before it turns Islam upside down. The more Muslims will keep ignoring this the more Islam will be treated as religion of terror and not peace and no western boots on the ground will ever fix this. The best response we've gotten so far is from the Kurds. Nobody else lifted a finger. Turkey even wanted money to accept Muslim refugees. Their own brethren and they wanted money for them... How does anyone expect things to get better when Muslims themselves don't give two shits?
I certainly agree but there's only as many people of Muslim ancestry that do actively identify as Muslim, want a reform of Islamic thought and are able to safely speak out. Kurds are certainly Muslim, but you don't really see them ascribing their differing values to Islam too much [0]. Seems to stem from their ethnic identity.
The best we can do is, I think, strongly incentivizing all the reformers. The vast majority of them today are in a sleazy situation. You complain to your compatriots - they'll lash out on you. You complain to the West - they'll ignore you. You complain to the Western right-wing[1] - they'll listen but use it to rationalize more hate.
[0] and if they are at heart, then that's definitely not the message that's being broadcasted to the world
[1] for the record obviously it's a hyperbole
What part of that comment could you possibly have agreed with?
Are you accepting the premise that "the Muslim world" turns its back on extremism? Why? How familiar are you with the Muslim world? Who are the people most impacted by radical Islamic terrorism? Here's a hint: it's not non-Muslims! Islam accounts for a quarter of the world's population, and there are tens of thousands of Islamic scholars expressing a continuous spectrum of opinions about the role of Islam in politics, all of which then have to pass through the same lens of geopolitics --- that Egypt has national interests that align imperfectly with those of Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, &c --- that every other school of thought must. How could you possibly accept such a simplistic premise as "the Muslim world ignores extremism"?
Do you find compelling the idea that Turkey should accommodate ISIS refugees without international subsidy simply because those refugees tend to be Muslim? Ignore for a second that Syrian refugees are not in fact all Muslims and stipulate instead that they are: what does a single shared cultural characteristic really tell us about Turkey's obligations to citizens of other countries? Put it this way: care to guess what the dominant religion of Latin America is? Is it therefore the case that the United States is obligated to accommodate every Latino immigrant?
I'm having a hard time locating a single coherent point in the inflammatory comment you just "certainly agreed to". I don't mean "point I agree with"; I mean "point that exhibits any internal consistency".
Can you help me understand what you found persuasive about it?
I have certainly not interpreted it the way you have. I don't question the Islamic world's disavowal of ISIS. I understand radicalism and extremism not to be ISIS but the general illiberalism and yes, unfortunately, in case of anti-Semitism support for terrorism. Which the Islamic world does have a huge PR problem in consistently disavowing IMO. In that context, the exceptionalism of Kurds is not their fight with ISIS but the significantly different stance on Israel, civil liberties, women's rights and in the case of HDP even pushing the envelope on LGBT rights.
I run a personal social media account that's vaguely about Israel with a significant following of Middle Easterners and Pakistanis. I often get messaged by people wanting to do a little bit of debating (amongst the sea of hate mail of course). Which outside of a deep interest is where my personal experience comes from. Part of my family is nominally Muslim too so I'm always eager to look for any signs of Islamic liberalism.
Of course now that you have written it out this way I can understand your reading of that comment too. And, yes, the comment about Turkey I have overlooked.
That's a bit like claiming that Catholics in South America are on the hook for Evangelical-committed hate-crimes in North America. Turks, Kurds, Persians, Berbers, and Arabs are all actually distinct ethnic and national groups.
As to extremism, the real problem is the use of Saudi oil money to pay for extremist imams. Many Muslim refugees have shown up in Europe and reported to the authorities that they find their new "local" imam frighteningly extremist, because that "local" imam was Saudi-funded while their original upbringing in Syria or Iraq wasn't Wahhabi.
All: toxic threads like the one below are the reason why we're going to try an experiment called "Political Detox Week" on Hacker News.
For one week, starting Monday, all political stories and threads will be off topic. We'll kill them when we see them and ask users to flag them. Then we'll see what happens.
Love this idea. There are plenty of other places for vitriolic discussions like this on the internet and IMHO HN should not be one of them.
I agree. HN will be better without threads about politics.
When you say "all", make sure you follow through. But I don't know how you're going to distinguish between politics and 'current events'. In any case, US news seems to always take precedence over anyone else in the world.
Why do we need to discuss current events on HN? From the guidelines: ”If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic”.
That's what I meant exactly. When it comes to US news and big events, HN forgets all its policies. If the policy is "all" then stick with the principles, or else it doesn't work.
> When it comes to US news and big events, HN forgets all its policies.
That's a misunderstanding of what the policy has been.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922304#4922426
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Thats really unfortunate, given that there's an Austrian presidential election tomorrow, as well as Italian constitutional referendum. Would it be possible to allow just one story about each Monday mirning? You can kill it by the time US awakens...
I'm sorry to reply with exactly the opposite of what you were hoping for, but that information makes me think that it will be an even better week to do this, as the experiment will be more meaningful.
To be honest, I don’t think HN is the right place to discuss that. Too often the discussions get really nasty.
I lurk and occasionally interact here, but this made me kinda concerned so I figured I'd reply. Not sure if this is the appropriate place for feedback (If it isn't, sorry in advance!) But just my 2¢: I personally don't think this is a good idea, both in principle and because of the practical consequences. Politics and software development/hacker culture/startups frequently overlap (user privacy, patents, open data/governments, just to name a few examples) plus the moderation team will be forced to come up with an official definition of what is politics and what isn't for the sake of enforcing rule. Since this is clearly subjective, users will start arguing over the definition, and every time a thread is on a "gray area" and get's flagged/doesn't get flagged people will get upset and fight over that instead.
Wouldn't it be much better to simply introduce a flagging system for "toxic" discussions (since clearly they can and do start from other, more mundane subjects, e.g vim/emacs) Then whoever doesn't like them can simply filter them out?
I personally try to be as non-toxic as possible in my remarks, since I feel like that prompts way more useful discussion, but I don't mind/don't care if discussions become toxic (since the original news might still be relevant/interesting, and it's really hard for the comments to be 100% toxic), and I believe at least some people are like me in that regard. I also understand other people might think different too, so a filter could be a nice compromise?
Thanks for the thoughts, and especially for being non-toxic in your remarks! If only everyone would do that.
Yes, some stories of core interest to this community have political aspects, but those aren't the kind we're going to kill. The concern here is pure politics: the things that get people flaming about party, ideology, nation, race, and religion. A news story about patents or encryption isn't going to have a problem on HN (though a rant may).
You're right that we can't precisely define politics. But this is nothing new. The site guidelines talk about politics without defining them, and we get by. Moderation has a few core principles and the rest is case-by-case judgment calls.
Re flagging systems: HN has got one, but it has proven insufficient to solve the problem of people hurling rocks and feces at each other when the political drugs take hold.
Re filtering out: it's in HN's DNA that everyone sees the same site. Also, if we quarantine political flamewars in their own section, we still have to maintain that section. Few people who appreciate what HN is really for—stories that gratify intellectual curiosity—would go there, making the degeneration worse. The users who primarily want that kind of a site are not the ones we feel most strongly about serving, and conversely, those users really want a different kind of site than HN. That's fair, but we need to clarify what HN is and isn't. We're trying to avoid scorched earth here.
I appreciate that you don't mind the toxicity so much. That makes sense and part of me feels the same way. But the effects we're concerned with are systemic ones on the community as a whole, and there it's a different matter. The culture has a low and sensitive tolerance for toxicity, not a high one. As the culture degrades, the best people slowly leave, and then not so slowly. Meanwhile their replacements show up with wheelbarrows of rocks and feces. That is how open communities on the internet die, and not letting it happen is our top responsibility.
Don't forget that we're talking about an experiment for one week, just to see what happens. If you have any observations about what happens, please share them with us. We don't have a fixed opinion about this.
Mirror: http://www.nasdaq.com/g00/article/with-small-muslim-communit...
It really baffles me how the Muslim world turns its back on extremism and radicalization. Devout Muslims claim that Islamic extremists aren't real Muslims and just shrug it off. Wrong. They are a growing minority of Muslims whether you like it or not and Muslims need to deal with this plague before it turns Islam upside down. The more Muslims will keep ignoring this the more Islam will be treated as religion of terror and not peace and no western boots on the ground will ever fix this. The best response we've gotten so far is from the Kurds. Nobody else lifted a finger. Turkey even wanted money to accept Muslim refugees. Their own brethren and they wanted money for them... How does anyone expect things to get better when Muslims themselves don't give two shits?
> It really baffles me how the Muslim world turns its back on extremism and radicalization
They don't; Muslims are involved in most of the de-radicalisation and de-extremism work in Europe.
I certainly agree but there's only as many people of Muslim ancestry that do actively identify as Muslim, want a reform of Islamic thought and are able to safely speak out. Kurds are certainly Muslim, but you don't really see them ascribing their differing values to Islam too much [0]. Seems to stem from their ethnic identity.
The best we can do is, I think, strongly incentivizing all the reformers. The vast majority of them today are in a sleazy situation. You complain to your compatriots - they'll lash out on you. You complain to the West - they'll ignore you. You complain to the Western right-wing[1] - they'll listen but use it to rationalize more hate.
[0] and if they are at heart, then that's definitely not the message that's being broadcasted to the world [1] for the record obviously it's a hyperbole
What part of that comment could you possibly have agreed with?
Are you accepting the premise that "the Muslim world" turns its back on extremism? Why? How familiar are you with the Muslim world? Who are the people most impacted by radical Islamic terrorism? Here's a hint: it's not non-Muslims! Islam accounts for a quarter of the world's population, and there are tens of thousands of Islamic scholars expressing a continuous spectrum of opinions about the role of Islam in politics, all of which then have to pass through the same lens of geopolitics --- that Egypt has national interests that align imperfectly with those of Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, &c --- that every other school of thought must. How could you possibly accept such a simplistic premise as "the Muslim world ignores extremism"?
Do you find compelling the idea that Turkey should accommodate ISIS refugees without international subsidy simply because those refugees tend to be Muslim? Ignore for a second that Syrian refugees are not in fact all Muslims and stipulate instead that they are: what does a single shared cultural characteristic really tell us about Turkey's obligations to citizens of other countries? Put it this way: care to guess what the dominant religion of Latin America is? Is it therefore the case that the United States is obligated to accommodate every Latino immigrant?
I'm having a hard time locating a single coherent point in the inflammatory comment you just "certainly agreed to". I don't mean "point I agree with"; I mean "point that exhibits any internal consistency".
Can you help me understand what you found persuasive about it?
I have certainly not interpreted it the way you have. I don't question the Islamic world's disavowal of ISIS. I understand radicalism and extremism not to be ISIS but the general illiberalism and yes, unfortunately, in case of anti-Semitism support for terrorism. Which the Islamic world does have a huge PR problem in consistently disavowing IMO. In that context, the exceptionalism of Kurds is not their fight with ISIS but the significantly different stance on Israel, civil liberties, women's rights and in the case of HDP even pushing the envelope on LGBT rights.
I run a personal social media account that's vaguely about Israel with a significant following of Middle Easterners and Pakistanis. I often get messaged by people wanting to do a little bit of debating (amongst the sea of hate mail of course). Which outside of a deep interest is where my personal experience comes from. Part of my family is nominally Muslim too so I'm always eager to look for any signs of Islamic liberalism.
Of course now that you have written it out this way I can understand your reading of that comment too. And, yes, the comment about Turkey I have overlooked.
That's a bit like claiming that Catholics in South America are on the hook for Evangelical-committed hate-crimes in North America. Turks, Kurds, Persians, Berbers, and Arabs are all actually distinct ethnic and national groups.
As to extremism, the real problem is the use of Saudi oil money to pay for extremist imams. Many Muslim refugees have shown up in Europe and reported to the authorities that they find their new "local" imam frighteningly extremist, because that "local" imam was Saudi-funded while their original upbringing in Syria or Iraq wasn't Wahhabi.
Euhm I think you'll find that local news papers regularly do blame them for that.
"Liberalism and Islam": http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/01/liberalism-and-islam...