Ask HN: HN Political Headline Filter? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: HN Political Headline Filter?

3 pointscatwork3 comments

I really appreciate HN from a technical perspective, but have little interest in the political posts and discussion that have become popular in the last few years. It would be great if the HN user profile page could have a "political filter" checkbox that could be set to filter out results on the main page that moderators flagged as "political".

Would there be any possibility for adding this type of functionality?

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I think that, if HN was split into subforums where I could choose to visit a particular topic, that would be fine. For example, if there were five subforums (like below), users could either visit those subforums or not as per their choice:

- Startups, Entreprenuership (a.k.a. classic HN)

- Politics

- Off-topic

- Ask HN

- Jobs and Hiring

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That would never have happened under pg but who knows what the future holds with new people running it.

Under the current HN model though, I flag anything political. Politics is difficult here. The old HN was "a LOT of young Californians who used their real names" and the new HN is "a LOT of international users and most people use aliases". The political differences between ages and between geographical regions make this a very difficult thing. For example, does a 43yo Texan want to talk US politics with a 17yo kid from Ukraine? Probably not - the ages and cultural differences are just so huge that finding common ground takes time and, in a short format like this, that's tough.

Some of the long-time users here think that it's important to flag submissions that are mostly about politics and that don't encourage the thoughtful discussion of deeply interesting stories that they hope characterizes Hacker News. I have to agree. What's about "politics" mainly and what is about politics just incidentally is a judgment call, but I have been convinced by listening to participants here who have been here longer than the 1970 days that I have been here that it is helpful to the community to flag most new submissions that deal with politics. Those submissions only rarely generate informative, thoughtful discussions.

The "HN is not like the good old days" refrain has been around for years of course. But seeing a comparison of HN from a few years ago compared with a recent front page is pretty stark. That's why - though what is a political is a judgement call - I would be OK with a moderator making an informed if somewhat arbitrary call.

Anyway - I appreciate your comment - and many others that I have seen you post over time.

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