I hear you and I agree that there are topics which conventional politeness cannot respond to adequately, and that this is one of those topics.
If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.
How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're right that it's difficult.
From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.
Thanks. I was not critical, especially not of the moderation, just tried to sum up what I think about it, and other than meaningless outrage there was nothing there. And yet there is no point in that because that's just letting off steam. I don't think it should be removed either.
dang, I think you’re getting this badly wrong - there’s nothing intellectually curious happening on this thread, it’s just a hate-fest.
(Don’t feel obliged to reply as I know you’re very busy. I just wanted to give some feedback and it appears flagging is being disregarded for this submission)
I'm mostly just seeing people discuss what Israel's military is doing, with people on both sides adding historical context. It's sure as hell not a "hate-fest."
There’s literally “We need to kill all the Jews” posted by FreePalestine12. If what’s being left visible is anything to go by then what’s being deleted must be horrendous.
This thread is completely outside HNs norms. I get people have really strong feelings about I/P but this type of submission isn’t what HNs is for, at least as I understood it.
I don't agree that it's off topic, nor that HN would be better if we suppressed it and acted like this isn't happening. We're trying for a global optimum*, and the most important part of that is not to settle for local optima, such as not discussing difficult things.
I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403458.
If you're really intent on fostering higher quality, honest discussion maybe don't just make exceptions for the the post about Israeli mistakes which they actually investigate.
There are reasonable discussions to be had, but the submissions which might catalyze them are quickly flagged (as opposed to defended, like this one).
Funnily enough I just finished responding to someone who makes the opposite complaint about us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403907. Notice that word "always", which both of you use. Interesting, no?
People with strong passions on a topic always feel like the moderators are against them. (As you see, I'm not immune to "always" perceptions either!)
I wish we could do something about that—I don't enjoy having so many people, from all sides of every divisive topic, feeling like we're against them when we're not. However, after years of observing this and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it's inevitable. The cognitive bias underlying it is just ironclad. We all share this bias, which is why your complaint and the complaint of someone on the opposite side are basically the same.
It's true that HN has hosted several major threads about Israel/Gaza, but it's also true that many (perhaps a hundred times as many) submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags. I don't see an "always" in there.
As for Saturdays—that factor is so far from affecting how we moderate HN that I had to puzzle for a bit over what you might mean. Nor does this discussion strike me as one-sided. People wouldn't be disagreeing with each other if it were.
dang I cannot respect you enough. Thank you. I have strong feelings about Palestine and learned quite long ago how powerless my rhetoric is. Although I believe I see the truth, it's clear the world needs yet more time. The only thing that must be done now is to facilitate discourse and to leave the flow of information unimpeded. Time will humble us all.
I would be very surprised if the majority, or even a significant fraction, of those who are on the "Israel" side were observing Jews. Jews are probably a minority of Israel-supporting commenters, and observing Jews are, in my experience, a minority of these Jews.
That's a pretty serious accusation, and I don't think you can actually back that up with anything.
Online, pretty much any time Israel is discussed, the majority of commenters (or articles) are anti-Israel. Regardless of why you think that is, it's just a fact. You can't blame dang for that.
You don't decide what's on topic or the spirit of HN. If anyone does it's Deng, who you're arguing with. Sorry you feel the need to decide what adults can talk about.
I've very well aware who Dang is (clearly you don't, at least write his name correctly). You have a lot of venues to vent on reddit, facebook, twitter etc.
Clearly Dang is biased and therefore he bends the guidelines:
"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."
Maybe you should have a bit more intellectual humility. "Clearly Dang is biased" (emphasis mine)? You might be right, you might be wrong, but I for sure don't think you can be certain of dang's motive here, especially considering lots of people on the "other side" of this issue feel he's biased against them!
I believe the majority of stories are voted on, and flagged, by the community. If the community decides these are stories worth discussing, I think they fit within the guidelines of HN. Stories about the Russia/Ukraine war also appear. So do stories about US politics. In all of these threads some people complain that they're off-scope, but apparently enough of the community wants to talk about them that they sometimes get upvoted.
That's not clear at all. What is clear is an apparent impulse to shut down an unfavourable discussion and throw unproven accusations. There are lots of articles on non-tech posts on HN, you haven't shown he's unfair.
If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.
How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're right that it's difficult.
From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.