alt Hacker NewsI get that. And if an LLM story disappears from the front page—oh well.
I'll defend the political stories though. For me, all the other places out there that vend politics are truly awful. While a political post lingers briefly on the HN front page, I find I actually learn something from the comments. If there are shit-posts in the discussion, they are quickly "dead". More often though there are (seemingly) reasoned debates about the issues in the comments.
I appreciate (what I am embarrassed to call) a more intellectual discussion on politics than I have been able to find anywhere else. (Embarrassed because I'm walking a fine line trying not to appear to cast the discussions as "elitist". Or maybe I am an elitist, who knows.)
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It’s not that the quality of politics posts here are very high (you get plenty of “engineers outside their domain” type stuff). Just, it is hard to find sites with
* Active political discussion communities
* That haven’t swung dramatically to some extreme and eventually worn down the local “opposition” party
I’ve got boards I go to for politics but the ratio is so lopsided, and the one or two remaining posters that disagree with the consensus seem to be more or less sticking around out of contrarianism (which unfortunately decreases the quality of their posts).
I think if HN let too many political threads stick around, that would destroy the whatever quality the discussion has.
I always agree with a good-faith, well-reasoned political argument. And HN generally seems to have a much more educated base than most of the other stuff out there--but agreed with the other person that I think it's probably best to keep that content off of HN, unfortunately.
I feel the same way. I crave high quality political discussion about what's going on in the US and this is one of the few places I can get it. Most places just offer memes and hot takes.
Nah, politics is a cancer that's infected everything. Let the addicts get their fix someplace else
The low quality posts and low quality responses and them being flagged makes the users affected, to use the moderators' terminology, "activated". It's not conducive to maintaining the HN we know and love.
Also the site moderators have plainly said that moderating these controversial political threads is a strain on them. You may be enjoying yourself but someone else is paying a hefty price.