[jader201]

I think parent just means that it’s a divisive topic, which means on the internet, that inherently makes it flamebait (and not necessarily through any fault of the reporting).

Even on HN (and sometimes, especially on HN).

There are some divisive topics that are less prone to flame wars on HN vs. other discussion platforms, but those are fairly limited, and often not political (in my experience).

[crystal_revenge]

The problem with this logic is that it is very, very easy for even a small number of people interested in silencing a topic on any issue they're concerned about "divisive" just by intentionally flooding the comments with knowingly inflammatory responses.

This has already be used on HN to essentially silence any serious reporting on climate change. Anyone technical with an interest in data will find most climate change related studies interesting, but a small minority of people who are fearful of the consequences will make sure to create an issue and shut down conversation, organically getting posts "flagged".

[pvg]

It's not some theoretical 'divisive', you can read how these threads go yourself, including this one. The meta discussions also make these a lot worse so it's hard to blame this on some 'small number' of people.

[bigyabai]

A lot of the flagged posts look completely fine, to me. Basically the entire discussion is greyed out, which suggests a pretty intense unwillingness to talk about the subject on principles alone.

I think by playing the brinksmanship card of "there can be no level-headed discussion" you inadvertently discount a lot of perfectly coherent and important digression, on both sides. If every HN thread resorted to this logic, nobody would want to use the site.

[NaOH]

>I think by playing the brinksmanship card of "there can be no level-headed discussion" you inadvertently discount a lot of perfectly coherent and important digression, on both sides."

The brinksmanship card of HN is the reverse of this framing: There must be level-headed discussion. To wit:

>The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial.

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

[pvg]

It's better to link the things you want to use as examples because otherwise we aren't really talking about anything concrete. The thread on this submission is awful, for instance - so that's my first link.

[tacticalturtle]

I think the flag system in HN is unnecessary and prone to abuse in threads like these.

Some comments that clearly break the rules should be removed by the community. But that should take multiple downvotes.

The flagging just allows one or two people to remove a part of the discussion, and we rely on other users to view dead or flagged comments to “rescue” them

[jader201]

I don’t disagree. I’m just afraid it’s a hard problem to solve, at least an automated one.

At one point, I proposed a read-only option for (well-reported) divisive articles to help raise awareness without resulting in flame wars.

But there are downsides to that, too — either they can still get flagged away, there’s a risk of garbage remaining on the FP if you disable the flag feature, and/or HN gets accused of bias if they manipulate certain articles this way (by disabling flags and/or commenting).

[Aeolun]

I feel like it’s wrong to call this topic divisive. It doesn’t adequately address that one side of the divide seems to consistently advocate for condoning genocide in broad daylight.

[jazzyjackson]

not sure which side you mean. gaza and israel have had officials advocate for the destruction of the other. that's kinda what makes it an existential total war.

[jader201]

I’m not necessarily saying it is or isn’t.

But I think, by definition, if an article draws a lot of flagged/downvoted comments (as this one has), it’s hard to argue that it’s not divisive, at least to this audience.

[Aeolun]

Yeah. I won’t argue with the label. Just feel like we ought to have a better label for topics of this kind.