| HN Mirror

There's already such functionality, for both of the things you mention: emailing the mods to bring it to their attention. The mods have been known to disable flags for submissions.

That said, bringing up again "ideologically motivated flagging" ignores other reasons people may be flagging, such as the belief that such discussions aren't constructive on HN, independent of one's ideological or political position. And the mods do punish those that abuse flags and votes and submissions and comments. (And many who are so penalized think it's applied unfairly to them, from every ideological persuasion. Or that it's done ideologically rather than for incivility or other abuse.)

Here's how I'd break down my position in a nutshell:

- These are important topics.

- These are topics I think need to be discussed.

- HN empirically has not been a place where such topics have been interestingly and constructvely discussed.

∴ Such topics are for the most part best discussed elsewhere (i.e., not HN).

What I read from your comment is that you think these topics should be discussed (which I agree with) and should be discussed on HN, which I don't because I don't think that HN is structurally fit to handle such discussions.

So, with that, I think there are two questions that I would like you to address:

- Do you think HN as it is now is the place to constructively have these discussions?

If you answer yes to this question, then you and I disagree, and as I noted upstream, I think the evidence is on my side. If you answer no, the next question is

- Do you think HN should be a place to constructively have these discussions?

If you answer yes, what would make HN a place where such discussions could take place? There are certain things I think are criticial to being able to discuss contentious topics constructivelly. Those include being able to identify over time the people you're engaged in discussion with. This doens't mean know absolutely: pseodonyms are fine. However, you can't get very deep into a discussion on contentious issues if you aren't able to take others on good faith, and you can't do that without establishing some kind of reputation. Repeatedly using throwaways works against this.

Likewise, there needs to be a common understanding of civility. The definition of civility isn't universal, and changes from forum to forum (both online and in real life). There's quite a bit of disagreement on HN of what constitutes civil behavior, which again makes it difficult to dig into contentious discussions constructively: a shared understanding of civility allows people to engage on equal footing. This isn't a failure of any one group or perspective. It's just a reflection of human nature. This isn't different from real life: there are some topics you discuss with your family, others with your friends (and different groups of friends), others at work. Each has their own norms that allows those different topics to be discussed constructively.

It also means that that each point shouldn't be relitigated again and again. That sucks all the air out of the room and gets in the way of people having interesting discussions on a whole host of other interesting, non-contentious topics which HN explicitly has as a goal. This is really no different than if every discussion boiled down to a language flamewar or similar repetition. It's not healthy for the forum.

This isn't an exhaustive list, but I think it captures some of the important characteristics that make constructive discussion on contentious topics possible. You may disagree.

HN, for better or worse, isn't built like that. It wouldn't be HN if it were substantially different. I'd love to see a forum that makes such discussions possible. I don't expect (nor necessarily want) HN to be that place.

Each of these is getting longer than the last, so I'll try to refrain from commenting more on this, at least until I find a publisher. ;)