I am quite sure (from both here and on Twitter, where i follow you) that our politics are roughly comparable, although i'm rather to your left. I have no problem with you - in fact i respect the hell out of you - and you are indeed someone I see Doing the Work over here on a regular basis.
I have zero issues with your position here, which I think is well-thought-out and held with integrity. I don't even disagree that HN is a poor venue for many kinds of discussions - that's why i almost never come here, because of the repulsive bullshit. My problem is with the laughable inconsistency of a community that thinks "diversity in tech" is a "political" topic but "cryptocurrency" and "East Asian investment in the US" are not. That is a fucking ridiculous, dishonest, and supremely entitled position to hold. "No political topics", in practice, just means "anything we don't want to think about" or perhaps "anything people might have strong reactions to". HN's mods and members are making a political statement here and they refuse to acknowledge it.
Anything even vaguely related to race, gender, or class, or in general anything that challenges HN members' certainty that they are übermenschen, is going to go poorly here. And probably always will, because it is a self-reinforcing issue. Good moderation is hard, especially when a community and its moderators tend toward free-speech absolutist positions. HN won't get better on these topics until the moderators stop putting up with horrible bullshit, and i have zero confidence that they're ever going to do that.
Hacker News can do what it likes, frankly, because i am positive that i will never feel welcome here. I do, however, think that it's a perfectly cromulent and civil gesture of protest for people like ubernostrum to point out topics that are, in fact, "political" - even if the vast majority of Hacker News wants to pretend that they're not. They're upholding a toxic fucking status quo, and they are allowed to do that! But i see zero problems with making them own it.
I'd distinguish personality-politics from policy discussions. One kind are always a cesspool. The other kind are most often not. Its helpful to untangle this issue if we can separate them.
"when a community and its moderators tend toward free-speech absolutist positions."
But oddly, this doesn't describe HN, because another aspect of the moderation is in favor of blandness, for the sake of avoiding flamewars. In college I was taught that good writing entailed taking strong positions, but the moderation here sometimes sees strong positions as being the same as flaming.
Well, yes, they also want everyone to be "civil", as though that's the highest ideal to aspire to. As though it's ever "civil" to, for example, call for the denaturalization and deportation of all Jewish people (as one very prominent HN member recently did), no matter how polite a tone one takes in doing so.
I have zero issues with your position here, which I think is well-thought-out and held with integrity. I don't even disagree that HN is a poor venue for many kinds of discussions - that's why i almost never come here, because of the repulsive bullshit. My problem is with the laughable inconsistency of a community that thinks "diversity in tech" is a "political" topic but "cryptocurrency" and "East Asian investment in the US" are not. That is a fucking ridiculous, dishonest, and supremely entitled position to hold. "No political topics", in practice, just means "anything we don't want to think about" or perhaps "anything people might have strong reactions to". HN's mods and members are making a political statement here and they refuse to acknowledge it.
Anything even vaguely related to race, gender, or class, or in general anything that challenges HN members' certainty that they are übermenschen, is going to go poorly here. And probably always will, because it is a self-reinforcing issue. Good moderation is hard, especially when a community and its moderators tend toward free-speech absolutist positions. HN won't get better on these topics until the moderators stop putting up with horrible bullshit, and i have zero confidence that they're ever going to do that.
Hacker News can do what it likes, frankly, because i am positive that i will never feel welcome here. I do, however, think that it's a perfectly cromulent and civil gesture of protest for people like ubernostrum to point out topics that are, in fact, "political" - even if the vast majority of Hacker News wants to pretend that they're not. They're upholding a toxic fucking status quo, and they are allowed to do that! But i see zero problems with making them own it.