Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by KhanMahGretsch 3047 days ago
My observation is that polite, decently-articulated comments are generally well-received at HN, and snarky, mocking comments are not tolerated. Stating an incorrect opinion as fact is not tolerated, but opinions are generally welcome.

This rule does not apply to political discussion, however.

If someone is incorrect, or there is a disagreement, the community will usually offer a correction, or open the topic for discussion. They will directly offer a rebuttal to what has been said in a manner that it beneficial. This, I believe, is what makes HN the great place that it is.

Again, this rule does not appear apply to political discussion.

I agree that the HN community runs the gamut of political views. I made no claim to the contrary. My observation is that I consistently see comments that meet the "HN Standard" of reasonable discourse being down-voted, and this practice appears to apply overwhelmingly to criticism of central-planning by the federal government.

I find your comment to be needlessly mocking, and I cannot make sense of your attempt to fudge the definition of "socialism" as "things I don't like".

1 comments

Ok thanks very much.

I guess one example of what I was talking about is your phrase: "your attempt to fudge the definition of "socialism"".

That's a rather inaccurate, poisonous misrepresentation of what I said and was doing, it seems to me. Yet you say it like it's the plainest fact, and maybe you believe it is. It's snarky. It's not assuming good faith. It's pure downvote material.

I was describing how it seems to me the word is used in the US nowadays. Or as I said, even more carefully, how it "seems nowadays to usually be used". I don't hear much news at all, less from the US, but a fair bit of that (before Trump anyway) has been hysteria about purported socialism, and e.g. any policy or intention Obama had that the far-right didn't like, described as such. It's laughable—at best, The Worst Argument In The World[0].

I likewise can't make any sense of how you thought I was trying to 'fudge the definition' of a word, if I understand what you meant by that. And I can't see which part of what I wrote was 'mocking', at all. The 'hahaha' at the beginning, if you were referring to that, was me laughing - I actually physically laughed like that, it was a record of that.

But I really appreciate the effort put into the rest of what you wrote, thanks.

[0]http://squid314.livejournal.com/323694.html