My thread about optimal governance had a lot of complaints. Many people think that such discussions shouldn't be allowed and I disagree. The thread was more about economics than politics. It wasn't anywhere close to the day to day politics covered on the tv news. There is no evidence of this site turning into reddit, except for the people claiming it has. Why disallow this discussion?
Maybe this is just me, but I come to this site to see new stuff and then read discussions about the current and eventual implications of that new stuff. In ask news.yc threads, I am looking for either new ideas posed as questions or people that really need advice.
What I don't want to see is the rehashing of age-old discussions or endless arguments where no one is going to change their minds. I think your post was an example of both. "What services would the perfect government provide?" I mean seriously, where is that going to go besides get people to write out their entrenched positions and defend them ad infinitum? If people want to read the arguments about different types of government they can go to wikipedia.
I take your point in that it hasn't changed that much yet here. However, if you can nip it in the bud initially you might prevent a slow eventual migration to something you don't want. Hence the suggestion of guidelines displayed on the submit page.
There often turn out to be new things you can say about age-old topics. And the smartest people are willing to change their minds about anything. So I don't think we should avoid topics simply because people have said a lot of stupid things about them in the past.
The key to getting positive insights out of controversial topics is to raise quality of the discussions rather than to censor them. My instinct was to agree with epi0Bauqu but one of the few stories I've upvoted after reading in the past day concerned both religion and politics [1]. This contradiction had been bothering me. But the situation is much more clear to me now.
An important goal for a community like this is to minimize or eliminate low quality, frustrating patterns of discussion. One can eliminate such patterns by censoring the topics that often lead to the discussions or by changing the culture of the group so that the problematic discussions are minimized.
The posting of libertarian/socialist/etc. aphorisms under the guise of an economic discussion should be discouraged. A relevant aspect of economics is that most interesting economic discussions rely on mathematics or at least a qualitative reference to a mathematical argument. If an intense economic discussion lacks such references it is almost certainly a low quality discussion.
Heh, I actually agree with your basic premise that it is better to make detailed and incremental tweaks than use the blunt instrument of wholesale censorship. This whole argument is somewhat ironic too because I like policy discussions and at least once enjoyed religious ones. (After all, I went out and earned a masters degree in Technology & Policy on my own volition and have written religious articles.)
What it comes down to for me, is that I am just heavily skeptical that raising the quality of these discussions to an acceptably interesting level in a relatively open online forum can be done, and so I have been advocating censorship instead. I hope I am wrong.
I think the key to making this work without censorship is ruthless downmoderation of low quality, uninterrsting, and annoying discussions. I am often hesitant to downmod but this is the tool that we have to shape the culture. If enough of us who care about having nondogmatic discussions start downmodding the situation might take care of itself.
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43891 sensationalist take (criminalizing information! plutocrats!) on admittedly problematic aspects of our society, voted up. This one's not so bad, but it still sets my hyperbole detector off.
- Random knee jerk libertarianism on other threads.
And those were ones that I noticed, that had been voted up. There have been more that thankfully have not been voted up.
I suppose this means case closed. If you don't want to avoid these topics, then I guess there is no avoiding them and I am wasting my time arguing the other way. If not, then what would it take--a site wide poll with overwhelming participation and an overwhelming majority?
Turns out, I agree with both of your premises, but just not the conclusion. Sure, the smartest people are willing to change their minds about anything. I'm not saying I'm the smartest person, but I am certainly willing to change my mind about anything. And sure, there are new things to say about age-old topics. There are great political science and religious studies PhD theses and other papers produced each year.
All that being said, I still don't want to see that type of discussion on news.yc. Again, this is just my opinion. I guess I'll just have to put up with it or leave.
"a site wide poll with overwhelming participation and an overwhelming majority?"
This is implicit with the modding process. If an overwhelming majority don't upmod politics and religion, then they won't make it to the front page often.
I think the overwhelming majority simply can't help but jump in with their two cents in a discussion about politics or religion... which is exactly why, overall, I'd rather avoid such discussions entirely. The signal-to-noise ratio is rarely worth it.
I'm not sure about old stuff. I think rehashing old topics can be very interesting. You often learn something new about them. Reddit has never been strictly "news", even in its heyday.
Politics and religion are special, they're just such huge topics and they're so personal to people. There's a reason people don't discuss these topics in business much. They're big distractions from the many things we all have in common.
I hope there's a ban on purely political and/or religious topics. This isn't censorship: 1) It's not done by the government. 2) The purpose is maintain focus, not suppress ideas.
Submissions on these topics does not bother me provided that they are about something that I did not see/consider before and they do not completely dominate the front page.
Anything gaming related (Playstation, Xbox etc.). Doing a gaming startup? Fine, post. Found some crack codes or new screen shots, karma should be put under assault by everyone.
My thread about optimal governance had a lot of complaints. Many people think that such discussions shouldn't be allowed and I disagree. The thread was more about economics than politics. It wasn't anywhere close to the day to day politics covered on the tv news. There is no evidence of this site turning into reddit, except for the people claiming it has. Why disallow this discussion?