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0 pointsbmacho5mo ago0 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

HN in general has a very strict policy against what "people find interesting":

   On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

   Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

News are like addiction, people don't act in their own best interest, they upvote things that they don't really want to see.

Also "just flag it" is not "wasting moderator's time", but the recommended procedure:

    Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

0 comments

tomrod5mo ago

> anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Correct.

xboxnolifes5mo ago

HN guidelines are hardly strict. There is so much politics that stays on the front page.

f1shy5mo ago

Well, that means hardly anything. Is up to us, and the moderators, to choose what we want HN it to. I find politics interesting, and often are pretty much on topic, e.g. politics related to protecting personal information. But often are not, and full of ad hominem "arguments"

From my POV, there is no doubt HN is getting more and more involved in politics and more and more polarized, which IMHO is not good. But I'm just one of many users... if it keeps going that way, I may have to leave. Is ok. In the meantime I will keep giving my opinion, as that is the very least what I expect from such a site: to be able to give an opinion (respectfully) without being instantly attacked, verbally or downvoted to oblivion. As can be seen in this case, we are reaching the point where that is not possible anymore... Let's see if the honest people or the trolls win the "battle".

xboxnolifes5mo ago

It doesn't mean hardly anything, it means exactly what I said. The guidelines are not strict. They are loose guidelines. That's not an attack on them, it's just an observable fact. The guidelines say one thing, but the users vote for another.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

tomrod5mo ago

> anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Correct.

xboxnolifes5mo ago

HN guidelines are hardly strict. There is so much politics that stays on the front page.

f1shy5mo ago

xboxnolifes5mo ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse