I come to Hacker News to see people talk about technology, innovation, trends, start-ups and tiny projects that pop up that do things that seem so obvious in hind-sight, but are in fact really clever. This recent news about WikiLeaks and Assange I feel don't really fit in any of these categories.
The Hacker News Guidelines [1] may be open to interpretation, but it does explicitly state:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
and
> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
There is a bit after the first quote that states "unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon," which I suppose is where we disagree. Nonetheless, if you and others feel it fits here, I'll respect your opinions.
If that was what this post was about then you'd have a point. Wikileaks and Assange's private life are almost entirely orthogonal IMO.
I don't see you complaining about things being 'off topic' in those threads.
This sort of argument should have a name (I'm sure it does) - "but gov, you didn't complain last time I cleaned your windows badly".
Oh and one more thing: topic, topic, topic topic.
How I look at it is that you are never going to be reading all the articles on the front page right? So if this doesn't interest you it is as simple as skipping it. If one day there is 15+ of these type of grey area links on HN, then that will be a problem, but I just don't see that happening.
On the whole, Hacker News is a great place, arguably the best of the news aggregation sites on the Internet. Even people who disagree with me here have upvoted other excellent submissions and posted excellent comments, so I'll at least thank them and the community as a whole for those.
The site had - and I guess it still has - some non-trivial (at least at such scale of pressure and exposure) operational issues: DoS attacks, denials of DNS service, hosting refusals, bank-accounts freezings, institutional threatening reactions from the mightiest states in the world... ...and yet it's still on-line under different URLs and mirrors.
Isn't that a true hackers' achievement worthy for discussing here at length?
I'm not quite sure, of course, but maybe hundreds of future PhDs in the history and political sciences - getting their degrees in the very same elite universities whose alumni now rule in US & UK - will be indebted to this man and this project that shed light on all the data.
Just think about that.
Both of those topics have nice subtle 1984-ish smell, though.
Who exactly has been endangered by the leaks? No concrete example has been given so far, and if there had been any, the US government would have jumped on the occasion to demonize Wikileaks even more. Without any proof, those allegations amount to FUD and hypocrisy, since the death toll caused by the US government is considerable.
Taking the Irak war as an example (but others abound, e.g. Chile or Vietnam): Bush attacked Irak based on lies, and, by 2006, the war had caused 654,965 excess deaths (direct and indirect casualties) [1]. I couldn't find a more recent estimate, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number had doubled by now.
Now that is a big death toll caused by hidden information, isn't it?
--
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casu...
Only one point: Neither Iraq war nor War in Afghanistan is justified by ANY argument at all.
If WikiLeak is so powerful then it should have exposed how Bush conspired to destroy these two countries, kill millions of people over there and get its own soldiers killed in a war no one can justify.
Michael Moore did more to expose the wrongness of Iraq war through his book "Dude, Where's my Country" then WikiLeak can claim to have done. Michael Moore was the first American celebrity who opposed Iraq war from Oscar podium and for that he was booed. He stood against the general public sentiment and two years down the line, people realized how right he was. Please read that book if you can, you can find some information about that book in Wikipedia, here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dude,_Where%27s_My_Country%3F regards.
"Freedom of information and expose MUST be for common man's good,"..... spoken as someone who's been brainwashed (pardon the use of that word) to be spoonfed information by those who control it. Who decides what's for "the common man's good" ? Why can't we see all the information and then decide for OURSELVES what's for our good?
"...and it destroys my reputation " .... just listen to yourself, man! Stop being scared of openness! Please, do us all a favor, go through the 1000+ cables and point us to 1 where someone's reputation is being destroyed.
WHY ARE PEOPLE SO SCARED OF WIKILEAKS??
* "freedom of information should end where it endangers...people's lives"
* "expose the wrong, not the mundane"
That’s why we so often end up with this uncomfortable decision between accepting a topic and the accompanying occasional article avalanches or locking out a topic completely, neither of which seems entirely appropriate Wikileaks on Hacker News.