Right, it wasn't a flame war here, I was referring to the 400 page version on PhysOrg. We could handle the topic -- by the end of the PhysOrg thread (I only read the last page) they're calling each other retards over the definition of continuous for limits.
A topic that gets ugly here sometimes and where no one ever has anything new to say is genes, nationality, and IQ.
Meta discussion is a very different type of flame topic. It's also been extremely important to defining the character of this board so seperating it MetaFilter style is a drastic step. How can we discourage metatalk when it is annoying but allow it when it is interesting?
Ok yes so the thread was a flamewar - but the way I saw the topic was as a conversation starter (rather than just post an Ask HN thread). I doubt many people read past the first page :)
But I take your point.
In terms of meta discussion; all that is fine. I just mean it should be considered "non gratis" to bring up flamey meta topics. Like Ban TC and so forth. It's been discussed a billion times before and always leads to flaming.
EDIT: I also love the rule that says if you've been here for less than a year dont moan about thinks going reddity - that's another pet-hate meta topic of mine :(
A topic that gets ugly here sometimes and where no one ever has anything new to say is genes, nationality, and IQ.
Respectfully agreeing, but sharpening the definition, I would say that the topic rarely gets ugly here on HN (it gets terribly ugly most of the time elsewhere online) and that I personally had a lot of new things to say on that topic the first few times I posted on it here. I do research on that topic
A topic that gets ugly here sometimes and where no one ever has anything new to say is genes, nationality, and IQ.
Meta discussion is a very different type of flame topic. It's also been extremely important to defining the character of this board so seperating it MetaFilter style is a drastic step. How can we discourage metatalk when it is annoying but allow it when it is interesting?