Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet?

[ar0]

Is there a place on the Internet for general -- including political and economic -- discussion that is filled with civil, insightful commentary?

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!).

From what I have read, The WELL seems to have been such a place (or still is?) in the "old days", but where do you go today for such an exchange of ideas on a variety of topics?

(Note: It is allowed to cost money.)

[TeMPOraL]

I mostly stay here. The amount of political and economic discussion here is what I personally consider enough in my life; I don't think looking for more sources would improve SNR for me.

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'll tune in to /r/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.

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'd focus on finding many specialized discussion places instead of one general.

[gkya]

HN is where I follow the tech news. For discussions, if we take civility as politeness and elaboration of one's points, HN is quite good. But if we take it as convivance and proper productive discussion of different, potentially opposite ideas, HN is not all that good. Here there are some certain and strong biases and dogmas, and the moderation is oligarchic. I've learnt to not post on political stuff and philosophical questions about tech, as all you get is downvotes, flags, thread-detaching and whatnot. I believe any politics post is off-topic here, and for philosophical questions on tech, if the tech is liked, sceptics are lapidated.

[enraged_camel]

>>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.

Paul Graham wrote an excellent essay on this: http://paulgraham.com/identity.html

[eevilspock]

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're not talking trolls.

Check out the top comment under SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’. It was at least generating some good debate, but HN decided to flag and bury it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11125896

See the dominant and buried comments for 272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11512830

Why was Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems flagged to death? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12304414

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.

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!

[dredmorbius]

So, funny thing, but I was just going through dang and sctb's comment histories to get a stronger sense of what makes HN tick. Despite (or because of) limited features, with strong guidance from the top (Guidelines, Paul Graham's "How to Disagree"), and a community that's evolved over the course of about a decade, the discourse here is pretty good. Not perfect, but the curation and commentary are usually informative, occasionally excellent. Topical breadth is limited, and there's no categorisation of posts, but what is covered is pretty good.

I'm contrasting that with Imzy, advertised as a "kinder, gentler Reddit", but which in my experience has been among the more vile, toxic, abrasive, and hateful hellholes on the Internet. I'm not a connoiseur of such spaces -- /b/, 4chan, and the like -- but I've seen what does work.

This set of guidelines from Google+ (unofficial AFAIU) are also useful. Communities with similar tools and principles tend to do better:

https://plus.google.com/+JohnSkeats/posts/F86Hv3L6kE3

In a series of investigations trying to assess the size, scope, and vitality of discussion at G+, I hit on the model of searching for names of significant authors or other authorities as a proxy for meaningful discussion. Foreign Policy has a list of "Global 100 Thinkers" published annually which provides a pretty broad-based, multi-ideology, and current basis for finding same, and a set of Google searches (looking at site match totals) along with an arbitrarily selected string to indicate potential conversations not of interest ("Kim Kardashian"), gives an FP:KK index.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...

As earlier comments have noted, Metafilter has a staggeringly high FP:KK index, though low overall traffic. Reddit is also quite high, and blogs, most particularly Wordpress.com, perform quite well.

This is the sort of tracking I'd like to do over time and across more sites -- it would be particularly useful to have a web search which would simply return the top n domains and hit counts rather than having to parse results and insert search delays (about 45-60s seems to be sufficient) to avoid Captcha prompts.

Conversely, you could find some good search tokens for topics of interest and see where results tend to pop up.

Looking at the detailed results (which I've not posted, the tables simply become too large for convenient presentation), some pretty clear patterns of distribution across both sites and identifiers turn up. Richard Dawkins and Pope Benedict, for example, were both highly popular, though on different sites.

There's a huge amount of public Web activity at several private educational institutions, in particular Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cornell University, University of Michigan, and Johns Hopkins. By comparison, the University of California system, which I'd have expected to be more significantly represented, is tiny. European educational institutions are also sadly anaemic, with largely UK schools represented, also Maastricht and Unibo (Italy).

I did a follow-up search through major Libertarian organisations which was pretty disappointing. Having discovered virtually all are part of the Atlas Network might improve my search space a bit, and might make an interesting follow-up.

I've also become fairly convinced that good conversation scales poorly. I'm experimenting with a set of smallish groups, probably ~30 - 300 people, though that remains to be seen via empirical results. These are "knitting societies" in an effort to both be un-cool ("cool" and "good discussion" seem inversely related), and in the sense that these might be societies that knit together, both internally and externally. We're somewhat looking for a good home. (Imzy had been on the candidate list. It's no longer.)

The other option is to seek out the specific people you're interested in discussing things with. I've been taking to simply emailing people directly with either questions or information I'm hoping will be of interest. I got a response yesterday (after a week or two) from a Famous Authority in an Area of Interest who not only appreciated the obscure detain and evidence I'd turned up but invited more. Not bad for a space alien cat / 1950s sci-fi character.

The signal's out there, but you've got to hunt for it, and it is very easily scared off.

[rubidium]

Let me answer a different question: where do you go for civil, insightful commentary?

I recommend gathering a group of "morning cup of coffee" people with an intellectual bent. This works particularly well among more academic neighborhoods, but can be done elsewhere.

Get 3-10 people you know (or get to know these people) that are generally aware of the world, from different walks of life/professions, and start meeting a few days a week at a local coffee shop. Ensure the shop has a copy of better publications across the political spectrum. Talk shop. Talk the world. Talk whatever.

The internet is good at information. It limps quite a bit when asked to do conversation.

[DeathArrow]

You mean he should get out of his house? Isn't it dangerous?

[cookiecaper]

I agree. A great deal of social communicative data that is crucial to make meaningful connections is lost online. Even people who are good at reading and writing, and that's not very many, are deprived of a lot of real-time information that is automatically communicated in person, like tone, eye contact, facial positioning, and other signals. Humans are heavily dependent on those cues for successful interaction.

Further, the Greater Internet Fuckwad theory [0] applies -- taking away the complex risk calculations involved in face-to-face conversations causes people to discard social inhibitors like civility rather quickly.

[0] http://i.imgur.com/RkSu1kn.jpg

[veddox]

Can confirm this. I get my best, deepest and most respectful conversations on a huge range of topics simply by talking to my best friends at university. (As we have some very different views, those discussions can be quite lively, but as we all respect each other personally, they remain civil.)

Moral of the story: Choose your friends wisely.

[cableshaft]

You gave me an idea for a new type of meetup for my meetup group, thanks :)

[jrumbut]

The great thing that happens sometines on the internet, but rarely (yet wonderfully) in real life is that when you have a good conversation about something it often brings in people directly involved.

That's the reason I still bother to scan comments, for those moments.

[carpathiani]

meetup.com is great for finding this

[truth_sentinell]

Do you happen to have one of your own? I'd be interested in joining.

[yodsanklai]

I don't think you can get the same collective intelligence in a small group (even composed of very bright people) as you can find here on HN.

[forgottenpass]

I find this area to be best filled by blogs. The format allows long ideas to be explored in a way no "social" site can. The comments sections are better at being on-topic, because there are less people stumbling in from another corner of a generalist platform. Or comments are disabled, and if you want to participate in a back-and-forth, you need to start your own blog and have something worthwhile to say. Barrier to entry helps with signal to noise ratio. The youtube comments are widely regarded as worthless, but bad video essays on youtube don't make people give up on watching video essays in general.

There is a lot of legwork in finding and following good blogs or aggregators. But if you're seeking out ideas (or "insightful commentary"), you can't avoid doing the legwork. Stopping in one place limits you to the scope of ideas found in that place.

HN and (some) subreddits are certainly good starting points, but the content eventually become predictable, trite and cliche. Even here. (especially here?) The collective conscious of any one community amasses new ideas slower than someone seeking them out can consume them. And that's the best case scenario, it doesn't even account for for topics that have devolved into an echo chamber, or constant flamewars on certain topics. You have to constantly keep moving.

Note: When I say blogs, I mean blogs. Not some hackneyed news-blog that will feed your mind poison just to keep you coming back. The Gawker properties were a FOX News for a younger, lefter crowd and it drove me up the wall when people didn't recognize that.

[monk_e_boy]

I found this leads me into a bubble of internet that only shows me what I agree with. I've found myself going back to reddit just to get both sides of the story. It's useful when say the Trump fans post things that lefties find hard answering, those are the points that I find myself thinking about late at night.

[type0]

> Note: When I say blogs, I mean blogs.

I agree. The only problem is that it's in a way difficult to have a discussion with blogs. Let's say I read a great post somewhere, the person might or might not have comments on their page (embedded facebook comments are worst are ppl still not aware that not everyone uses it?). If they do have comments I probably wouldn't be able to reply (unless I'm a regular visitor of their site). If I write a longer reply and put it on my blog then there is this whole thing that if I put my link in their comments it's not as seamless. My best hope is some sort of IndieWeb solution for this but so far I haven't found anything that works any good.

[niftich]

It's funny, because 4chan, especially it's topic-focused sub-boards, isn't nearly as unfit for this as it might seem. Yes, the signal-to-noise ratio will be low and it'd be generous to pretend the conversation will always be civil, but there are some pluses:

- No downvotes, so opposing viewpoints don't get suppressed

- (Multi-)Reply support, so you can address your response to a specific post or posts

- Everyone already expects a low signal-to-noise ratio

- Everyone comes expecting some amount of personal attacks, offensive content, blatant trolling, and off-topic posts, so seasoned commenters aren't driven off by this behavior

- Default anonymity means no way to earn or lose reputation, so the only way to judge a post is by its content

4chan has plenty of downsides regardless and it won't appeal to everyone. But compared to Youtube comments or the typical CNN comment section, there is far less majority-moderation, far less intermingling of policy points and personal attacks within the exact same post, and far less propensity for people to respond to comments they deem off-topic or irrelevant.

[eloy]

I'd say Reddit. There are some heavy moderated subreddits for insightful discussions, like reddit.com/r/truereddit. Because Reddit has a voting system like HN, quality content is being upvoted and shown as first.

If you search you can probably find some more subreddits with less general content. And HN is of course a really great website for such discussions, with a lot of highly intelligent people that post quite lenghty comments. HN is probably my favorite website when it comes to discussions.

[simonswords82]

Reddit's greatest strength (the subreddit architecture) is also its greatest weakness. Subs attract groups of likeminded individuals usually with a particular interest, and as such a default tone and set of opinions are preset within a sub before you arrive.

If you fail to understand what the preset rules of engagement and opinions are you're going to have a bad time. Worse still, if you happen to disagree with the general consensus of a sub your opinion will simply be downvoted and your voice will not be heard. You're very unlikely to be educated by existing sub members as to why your opinion is wrong with any real sense of perspective because the hive mind has kicked in and you're not aligned with it.

The larger the sub, the more this problem is exacerbated as there are more people ready and waiting to hit the downvote button. This means that you're very unlikely to encounter a balanced and sensible (aka civil) discussion on Reddit.

[jscheel]

Agreed. There are several heavily modded subreddits for this. /r/neutralpolitics, /r/neutralnews, /r/truereddit, etc/

[cheriot]

reddit.com/r/askhistorians is a goldmine. I love sitting in the cheap seats for some of the discussions there.

[mozumder]

The problem with places like Reddit is that they rely on users to moderate.

The obvious problem with that is now stories are filtered based on populist mass appeal, instead of insightful or expert appeal.

Populist content is very different from expert content. Clickbait headline is populist content. A peer-reviewed journal headline is expert content.

Which one do you think is going to be upvoted in a place like Reddit?

[Redoubts]

> There are some heavy moderated subreddits for insightful discussions, like reddit.com/r/truereddit

True Reddit is decidedly not heavily moderated:

> This subreddit is run by the community. (The moderators just remove spam.)

[theswaagar]

/r/politicaldiscussion is one that I frequent

[PascLeRasc]

/r/changemyview is a great one for this.

[nik1aa5]

reddit.com/r/geopolitics

[basseq]

HN - Discussion is generally civil, and snarky or underhanded commends are generally downvoted swiftly. Not much in the way of political and economic commentary, and the discussion tools (e.g., the platform, notification, etc.) are just OK.

Quora - There are pockets of intelligent thought, but discussion is limited to an answer and maybe a couple comments. And there's a ton of noise and not nearly enough moderation. But some of the content is really good and the Quora Weekly Digest remains one of the more interesting emails I get every week.

Newsvine - I haven't been active here for years (since 2008-2009), but it used to be a great community with good discussion and a strong focus on politics and recent news. I think it's gone downhill.

I haven't waded into sub-Reddits yet. I really got out of arguing with random people in the internet. I have better things to do with my time, and (echoing the OP) most comment threads are filled with assholes and comments like: "Wow. You must not have finished elementary school."

[gunn]

I've been wondering: would it be practical to build a reddit/HN like system where the comments you see are by authors you've upvoted before, or authors they've upvoted before?

This way everyone can comment, and the low effort jokes etc. can still exist but you personally only see them if that's what you enjoy.

Currently we give every comment a single universal score. It's hard to come up with a simple set of rules that encourage useful participation long-term, but this system would highlight the insightful stuff through the noise.

[just_observing]

http://metafilter.com

[lsiebert]

Yeah, I don't consider moderation censorship. There are plenty of places to go for unmoderated conversations, but they are rarely civil. On Metafilter, abuse and insults aren't tolerated.

[deepspace]

Not anymore, unfortunately. Metafilter used to be a great community 10-15 years ago, but these days it is a heavily censored echo chamber.

[dj_axl]

Have an upvote. The "Note: It is allowed to cost money." reminds me that the $5 charge on MeFi filters out alot of noise. However, this doesn't necessarily promote an increase in quality. Much of the discussion can be, like Reddit, cute or snarky one-liner comments.

[NikolaeVarius]

From what I've seen, any place that claims to be "civil" also tends to be the most closed minded communities, especially ones that have upvote downvote systems.

Unless you happen to agree with the specific set of ideas that a majority of that community happens to agree with, your contribution is meaningless

[godshatter]

"Civil" seems to equate with "filtered via down votes". I would prefer seeing just the number of up votes and the number of down votes which gives it a "popularity ranking" of a sort. I can then make a determination for myself if I want to read it or not. Lots of up votes, few down votes? Probably speaks to the majority opinion. Lots of down votes and few up votes? Could either be a shit post or one that goes against the grain. Two seconds of reading will tell me which. Lots of down and up votes? Probably a comment I should read, even if I'm just skimming.

I don't need the community to filter for me, I'd rather just get more information in order to choose what to read. But then I usually read any forum in as raw a format as they allow.

[noiv]

It takes time and effort to construct a lasting narrative. For sure there are some defense mechanisms in place.

[pjc50]

Metafilter is great, partly due to the $5 posting account cost. I've lurked there for years and not posted.

CrookedTimber is the last of the oldschool blogs-with-comment-sections that I follow for this purpose, although it has some serious problem posters.

HN isn't really politically or economically focused so you kind of have to slip under the radar.

[Brendinooo]

Some of the Stack Exchanges do well here. It's not 'discussion' in a free-form sense, but in general I've found the focus of each SX and the Q-and-A format to provide a good way to talk about topics without going off the rails.

[walterbell]

There are insightful comments on almost every site with UGC, even if said comments are a minority. We need a client-side aggregator of whitelisted/upvoted comments, to "follow" pseudonyms and merge comments and context from many sites. Alternately, there could be communities which curate/whitelist comments from multiple sites, then readers could "follow" a feed of curated comments. RSS was a step in this direction.

Any site which achieves economic infuence via discussion quality/quantity will eventually attract paid posters of various stripes, ranging from sophisticated misdirection to uncivil discourse. Whitelists can reduce the cost of filtering this noise, but sufficiently good propaganda can best be detected by readers who co-evolve with paid influencers: "... elite consultants have adopted grassroots advocacy tactics for paying clients. Rather than being dismissed as mere 'astroturf', these consultants' campaigns should be seen as having real effects on political participation and policymaking", http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IO0E69E/

  Manually curated Twitter lists, viewed on Flipboard
  Private groups on Facebook
  Niche/subscription blog comments
  Amazon book reviews & comments (niche books)
  HN comments/stories from whitelisted users
  NY Times comments (quality varies by article topic)

[sergiotapia]

Almost all of the popular communities online lean left, take your pick.

You have much slimmer pickings if you're a conservative. http://gab.ai recently launched as a pro free-speech twitter alternative, I would also check them out.

[p333347]

I use twitter and have a quick and snappy discussion in about a dozen exchanges, many times with known people like journalists, columnists etc. Of course, you must carefully choose who you interact with or follow. I find engaging in discussion of such topics as politics and religion to be futile, and economics is intertwined with politics. I only do it when I see something intolerably incorrect or foolish and I just have to engage with the fellow (as in this https://xkcd.com/386/).

On a cynical note (or realistic if you will), I don't think topics like politics and religion can be discussed in a civil manner. If they are, then those discussing are not getting to the meat of the matter because once you get there, you are bound to hit a nerve or two and the civility facade comes right off. Even IRL those who engage in civil debates are more careful about appearing civil than actually debating effectively. The interwebs, with its anonymity and all that, allows one to be much more freer in bringing out their ugly side right of the bat (though sometimes it could be a persona adopted for the kicks).

[manish_gill]

I'm trying to create a private slack community for this actually. It's just a bunch of friends/trusted people who we know are smart, bring a new perspective etc and have good things to contribute. It's been slow going creating a community like that (high achieving, smart people who are usually too busy to participate - So far we're just 20 people with like 10 the most active) but I have hopes that some day it'll become good enough that I can open it up to the public.

Things we usually discuss (and we have at least 1 person who is more knowledgable/an insider so they can teach others and give context) - Tech, Economics, Geopolitics, Culture, Cinema, Photography, BioTech/Energy etc. The goal is _in depth_ discussions, not just water cooler commentary. But since it's friends, it also becomes your usual facebook chat replacement occasionally.

I know it's not the answer you're looking for (since it's actually private/friends and their friends etc for now) but just thought I'd mention this in the context. Trying to create and maintain a community has been an interesting experience so far. :)

[devinhelton]

I spend most of my time in small, private, invite-only forums these days.

As I get older, the problem with most forums is not so much lack of civility, but rather tediousness. Eventually, I have heard all the arguments, and if new comers to the forum hash out the same arguments over-and-over again, then I lose interest. Also I have found that the truth on a variety of issues is extremely politically incorrect, and so you either get a choice between forums that ban nearly all politically incorrect content or forums that are unmoderated and allow any vulgar or spiteful content. Neither are appealing to me.

I have been thinking of the of trying to start a forum for people who are very intellectually curious and not easily triggered by politically incorrect topics. Sign up here if you are interested, and you'll get an email if I decide to go through with it -- https://countersearch.net/forum

[a3n]

Form your own private, by-invitation, undiscoverable group. Friends and colleagues are the obvious place to start, and not too large.

I've belonged to one for almost 20 years. I think the group has varied between 10 and 20 people, a few have come and gone (and come back).

We use an email list, use whatever you like.

[losteverything]

If you are asking a place online that equates to in-person discussions, I would say there isn't any.

As I told my kid when I showed him mosaic, the screen is not a human. Humans have kindness and compassion. The screen is to get things. To some it is a way to make a living. The screen can never be generous; that is learned at the home.

Ann Landers and Dear Abby. Ever hear of them? Newspaper columnists who answered readers questions. I always asked, " Why would anybody seek help or advice from a newspaper person? " Plus, you have never met them.

Why would I seek advice or opinion from a person I never met?

Google any ailment and the results are astounding. Ask your mom or dad if it is something to worry about and you are likely to get a trusted answer

[asher]

One aspect we shouldn't overlook is stratification by intelligence. People of very different IQs have trouble communicating. So, "hateful repetition of populist punchlines" is a natural form of communication for average-intelligence people - to say nothing of below-average.

Now, the loudest, most visible fraction of any political group tends to be the stupid.

So your conversational Utopia needs some kind of poll-test at the entrance.

I think that an educated gentleman of 150 years ago wouldn't be annoyed at the ignorant opinions of a servant, because they were of two different worlds. Today with the spread of literacy and erosion of class distinction, these different levels of discourse are forced together.