HACKER Q&A
📣 airhead969

Can we have extreme political domains banned plz?


I keep seeing junk, political posts of a particular leaning that aren't conducive to the platform. They get flagged but the problem is they poison feeds and become widely advertised, using HN as a parasitic host.


  👤 dang Accepted Answer ✓
Most sites that are primarily or exclusively political are already banned on HN. But keep in mind that we prefer article quality to site quality: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... There are many sites which have mostly bad articles with occasional good ones. It's more important not to miss the good articles.

Beyond that, I'd need to see specific links. Nearly always when people ask about this kind of thing, they want us to ban the site not because it's political but because its politics are the opposite of their own. That motivation isn't in keeping with the intended spirit of curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and it's not how we look at moderation. The issue is whether a site occasionally produces a substantive article that gratifies curiosity and that can support a solid HN thread.

By the way, speaking of the HN guidelines, they specifically ask you not to post like this, but rather to send such questions to hn@ycombinator.com.


👤 h2odragon
Just because a site is extremely politically biased doesn't necessarily diminish their reporting; see https://www.wsws.org for example. Totally partisan and often excellent reporting.

👤 injb
Politics is already considered off-topic:

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon


👤 the_only_law
This, but drive by throwaway accounts that exist solely to post flamebait as well.

👤 Bostonian
I see that the 2 domains the OP listed in comments are right-leaning. I have often seen posts from the Atlantic (somewhat left) and Jacobin (very left) here. Your definition of "extreme" appears to be "right-wing". Would you allow National Review? City Journal? The WSJ editorial page?

👤 airhead969
spectator.us is one.

What are the others?


👤 airhead969
spectator.org