<story><title>Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?</title><text>Is there a place on the Internet for general -- including political and economic -- discussion that is filled with civil, insightful commentary?&lt;p&gt;Outside of specialist corners (such as HN), the Internet often appears to be filled primarily with hateful repetition of populist punchlines, providing little to no insight into the big topics that concern the world at the moment. This is such a shame, as the Internet really should be the enabler of discussion across borders and societies (which of course can become heated but should always be respectful and rooted in trying to understand each other!).&lt;p&gt;From what I have read, The WELL seems to have been such a place (or still is?) in the &amp;quot;old days&amp;quot;, but where do you go today for such an exchange of ideas on a variety of topics?&lt;p&gt;(Note: It is allowed to cost money.)</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>eevilspock</author><text>The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral. The civility here is often arrived at by burying comments that challenge this self-serving slant. Or by an algorithm that systematically buries articles and users (whose accounts accrue ranking penalties) that generate any heated debate by challenging the slant. We&amp;#x27;re not talking trolls.&lt;p&gt;Check out the top comment under &lt;i&gt;SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’&lt;/i&gt;. It was at least generating some good debate, but HN decided to flag and bury it. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11125896&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11125896&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;See the dominant and buried comments for &lt;i&gt;272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11512830&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11512830&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why was &lt;i&gt;Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems&lt;/i&gt; flagged to death? &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12304414&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12304414&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hell, even this post has been quickly taken off the front page despite having better numbers (70 votes in the last hour) than many items that are there now.&lt;p&gt;Politics and economics points of view are heavily filtered here. Rarely if ever does a challenge to the status quo make the front page. If one does it is then killed, ironically, for inspiring debate!</text></item><item><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>I mostly stay here. The amount of political and economic discussion here is what I personally consider enough in my life; I don&amp;#x27;t think looking for more sources would improve SNR for me.&lt;p&gt;I sometimes like to peruse Reddit for some well-defined topics - the trick is to find an appropriate subreddit for it. So, for instance, when I want to follow SpaceX news, I&amp;#x27;ll tune in to &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;spacex, because quite a lot of people there are aerospace engineers (and some are SpaceX employees), so you can expect detailed, up-to-date and to-the-point news.&lt;p&gt;My general observation is that the more specialized a community is, and the further it is from ego-involving topics (politics, economy, religion), the more civil the discussions are there. So I&amp;#x27;d focus on finding many specialized discussion places instead of one general.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dang</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m late to this thread but this is definitely not factual:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a cognitive bias where everybody thinks the slant they disagree with is the one that dominates this site. If you held opposite views, you&amp;#x27;d be arguing that HN is dominated by liberals or what have you. Perhaps that&amp;#x27;s not obvious to you, but it is to us whose job it is to oversee HN as a whole. HN&amp;#x27;s archives are full of people complaining about this from all sides.&lt;p&gt;The point of view you describe (or, to be fair, caricature) does exist on HN, of course. But the community is politically divided, most claims people make about who dominates it are just a rhetorical device, i.e. to score cheap points in arguments.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?</title><text>Is there a place on the Internet for general -- including political and economic -- discussion that is filled with civil, insightful commentary?&lt;p&gt;Outside of specialist corners (such as HN), the Internet often appears to be filled primarily with hateful repetition of populist punchlines, providing little to no insight into the big topics that concern the world at the moment. This is such a shame, as the Internet really should be the enabler of discussion across borders and societies (which of course can become heated but should always be respectful and rooted in trying to understand each other!).&lt;p&gt;From what I have read, The WELL seems to have been such a place (or still is?) in the &amp;quot;old days&amp;quot;, but where do you go today for such an exchange of ideas on a variety of topics?&lt;p&gt;(Note: It is allowed to cost money.)</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>eevilspock</author><text>The problem with HN for politics and economics is its decidedly Silicon Valley, libertarian and white male slant, often self-servingly pedantically amoral. The civility here is often arrived at by burying comments that challenge this self-serving slant. Or by an algorithm that systematically buries articles and users (whose accounts accrue ranking penalties) that generate any heated debate by challenging the slant. We&amp;#x27;re not talking trolls.&lt;p&gt;Check out the top comment under &lt;i&gt;SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’&lt;/i&gt;. It was at least generating some good debate, but HN decided to flag and bury it. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11125896&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11125896&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;See the dominant and buried comments for &lt;i&gt;272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?&lt;/i&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11512830&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=11512830&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why was &lt;i&gt;Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems&lt;/i&gt; flagged to death? &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12304414&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12304414&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hell, even this post has been quickly taken off the front page despite having better numbers (70 votes in the last hour) than many items that are there now.&lt;p&gt;Politics and economics points of view are heavily filtered here. Rarely if ever does a challenge to the status quo make the front page. If one does it is then killed, ironically, for inspiring debate!</text></item><item><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>I mostly stay here. The amount of political and economic discussion here is what I personally consider enough in my life; I don&amp;#x27;t think looking for more sources would improve SNR for me.&lt;p&gt;I sometimes like to peruse Reddit for some well-defined topics - the trick is to find an appropriate subreddit for it. So, for instance, when I want to follow SpaceX news, I&amp;#x27;ll tune in to &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;spacex, because quite a lot of people there are aerospace engineers (and some are SpaceX employees), so you can expect detailed, up-to-date and to-the-point news.&lt;p&gt;My general observation is that the more specialized a community is, and the further it is from ego-involving topics (politics, economy, religion), the more civil the discussions are there. So I&amp;#x27;d focus on finding many specialized discussion places instead of one general.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smsm42</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s challenging and there&amp;#x27;s challenging. If you&amp;#x27;re starting discussion with &amp;quot;you&amp;#x27;re amoral white male so here shut up and listen I&amp;#x27;ll tell you what you have to do to redeem your sorry existence&amp;quot; (I&amp;#x27;m not saying &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt; do, it&amp;#x27;s just an example - but not too far from what I&amp;#x27;ve seen done in other places) - it&amp;#x27;s a challenge all right, but not one that would lead to a good discussion.&lt;p&gt;Also, experience suggests there are topics that generate almost no useful discussion and very quickly descend into a shoutfest, outgroup shaming and virtue posturing. It is possible that &lt;i&gt;this one&lt;/i&gt; discussion on the very topic will not follow the pattern that thousands before it did, but usually the risk is not worth it.&lt;p&gt;Not every debate is good. And so, generating debate by itself is not a virtue.</text></comment>