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by untog 3406 days ago
> HN is sometimes one of the more progressive wings of the geek community.

I'll respectfully disagree with that. I think the rules set up in HN around both manual and automatic flagging mean that controversial stories quickly get buried, and only very straightforward, non-controversial articles get visibility.

Many users think this is a positive feature. I'm deeply ambivalent about it, but have come to accept that HN is simply not a place where controversial things are discussed with any measure of success. But don't mistake that for HN being a progressive haven.

EDIT: prophecy fulfilled. This submission got flagged off the homepage.
2 comments
noobermin 3406 days ago
Is this a controversial story? FFS it's about the first internet search engine. It is pretty on topic if anything on HN is.

You might be making a meta statement regarding other stories. Still this is pretty benign stuff.

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untog 3406 days ago
I was making a comment about HN being a "progressive wing", not about this article.
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firstworldman 3406 days ago
Admittedly, I'm more of a lurker and slightly-more-than-occasional visitor, so my experience of HN is probably not representative of the norm. However, I have seen racism and other prejudice called out frequently enough that I felt justified in giving the community some credit. Perhaps more than it deserves. Sadly, can't help but look at the discussions happening here as vastly more enlightened when compared with the ones that take place, for instance, in many Facebook groups related to tech.
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kristianc 3406 days ago
With respect - that's not what the OP is referring too. I'm sure if someone was being overtly racist they would be called out and banned. Most racists are smart enough to know that you're not going to get away with using a racial slur.

But power can be exercised in more subtle ways, including limiting what gets discussed in the first place or leaving comments like 'Thanks for not making it political' on threads about Haskell.

The flagging and downvoting of what I would call progressive but others would call 'political' themes falls under that category.

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