It's an opinion piece on politics. Why would you share this here?
yodon•1h ago
>Why would you share this here?
These are clearly important times, regardless of your politics. The HN guidelines define on topic as "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting."
Up-votes are a measure of what is found interesting. Posting the topic and receiving no up-votes (the "posted but not interesting to good hackers" case) means no presence on the front page, which means no one is impacted, aka the cost is low.
Alternatively, pre-emptively censoring something that might have been of interest (the "not posted but interesting to good hackers" case) means no discussion about a topic people would/do find interesting, aka the opportunity cost is high.
The site self-corrects, so we shouldn't live in fear of topics.
gardnr•1h ago
That same document says:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
and
> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
yodon•1h ago
> "Most"
There are news stories that are of particular interest and relevance to the type of system designer that makes up much of the HN audience. The community should be allowed to discuss them intelligently and politely.
cwillu•1h ago
“[…] Most […]”
“[…] probably […]”
skippityosborne•1h ago
Yeah, the overthrow of American democracy is not remotely interesting or worthy of discussion.
cwillu•1h ago
Your comment is a complaint that the submission is inappropriate, why would you write it here?
“Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.” --https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
gardnr•1h ago
yodon•1h ago
These are clearly important times, regardless of your politics. The HN guidelines define on topic as "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting."
Up-votes are a measure of what is found interesting. Posting the topic and receiving no up-votes (the "posted but not interesting to good hackers" case) means no presence on the front page, which means no one is impacted, aka the cost is low.
Alternatively, pre-emptively censoring something that might have been of interest (the "not posted but interesting to good hackers" case) means no discussion about a topic people would/do find interesting, aka the opportunity cost is high.
The site self-corrects, so we shouldn't live in fear of topics.
gardnr•1h ago
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
and
> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
yodon•1h ago
There are news stories that are of particular interest and relevance to the type of system designer that makes up much of the HN audience. The community should be allowed to discuss them intelligently and politely.
cwillu•1h ago
“[…] probably […]”
skippityosborne•1h ago
cwillu•1h ago
“Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.” --https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html