No, I think you're being willfully ignorant. He explicitly says "broaden allowed topics for discussion." He understands what's on topic and what isn't. He wants a place to have discussions that are off topic for Stack Overflow, but doesn't want to go to one of the many sites that already exist for that purpose. I don't think asking users to take off topic discussions to one of those other places is asking too much.
There is a disagreement about which topics should be allowed. Broaden means increase the number of topics considered to be on topic. He understands your definition of "on topic"; he just thinks it makes for a poor user experience. And I agree with him.
The problem here is that you and others confuse your view of "off topic for Stack Overflow" with some sort of universal truth. You get away with that not because you're right in some academic sense but because you have the power to drive off people with differing views.
I'm not the one who's confused. Moderators don't set the policy for what's on topic at Stack Exchange sites, the communities who use those sites do. The place to argue what is and isn't on topic isn't on that guy's blog, and it isn't here.
I believe the guy can say what he wants on his blog, and it's arrogant of you to think otherwise. And your notion that Hacker News users can't discuss what they want on their own site is crazed.
My point, and I think his, is that the ever-narrowing topic definitions may be what the participating community wants, but it is driving off people with different ideas.
If you're happy with that, fine. But insisting that outsiders aren't allowed to comment on it is just another symptom of the drive for orthodoxy that I think is ruining it in the first place.
I never said the guy couldn't or shouldn't post on his blog about it, nor did I say it can't be discussed here on HN. If you want something to actually be done about what you perceive as a problem though, you need to join in the community discussion at the site set aside for that purpose. Decisions about SE policies are made by the communities on SE sites, not on HN.
I fully disagree when you say that if you want things to change you have to go to discuss this on SE. The entire point is that SE is not just "SE policies" and "SE moderators": SE is first and foremost users and these users have their right to read criticism about SE on HN / reddit / blogs / etc. And the day a topic shall pop-up on meta saying that some introspection from SE may be needed, the more users have read well-articulated blogs entries and great comments explaining what they find very wrong on SE, the more likely they are to upvote these suggestions on meta. You're not an island and you to realize your most important users have a very vocal voice outside of SE and that this voice does have an influence.
This isn't my opinion, so I don't know what you're disagreeing with. Would you expect HN to change because of comments you read on Stack Overflow? Of course not. Everyone is perfectly welcome to discuss things where and whenever they want, but ultimately the ideas need to be discussed by the community of people who actually use SE sites. So yeah, I fully agree that you can go ahead and discuss things as much as you want here on HN and on blogs. I join in that sort of thing all the time. But if you want things to actually change, those ideas need to be posted and discussed among the community of SE users.
I would absolutely expect HN to change because of discussion about HN on StackOverflow. Why? Because a lot of smart nerds talking about it could have something useful to say. Smart product managers don't wait for their users to come to them with suggestions.
Honestly, I don't need to do that. Having been driven off by what I consider bad moderating, I'll spend my time elsewhere. The same apparently applies to a number of people posting here.
If you guys are happy to lose users in that fashion, by all means keep asserting that the only way you'll listen is if people put the right cover on their TPS report and submit it to the proper forum.
Whether you like it or not, SE users and former users are going to keep on discussing SE policies where they please. You guys can learn from it and even engage with it. Or you can just keep defining it as illegitimate, putting your hands over your ears, and going "la la la".
I didn't try to define anything as illegitimate. I don't make policy at SE, the community there does. There are thousands of active users who discuss policy issues on SE. Most of them are never going to see random blog posts and comments on HN. If you put ideas in front of them where they're actively discussing SE policies you might have better luck at changing what you don't like about SE.
You seem to be very insistent on not getting what I'm saying. Here's my last try:
If the community and/or SE's owners are interested in serving the public, then they should engage with people where they are. Some of those people are on SE; most aren't. That's especially true for people who have gotten fed up with SE and left.
It's not my job to fix SE's brokenness. Nor is it that of the blogger whose article is linked at the top. Making SE better is the job of SE's owners and moderators. So if somebody should be putting forth extra effort here, it isn't the people who have never used or have given up on Stack Exchange. And even if it somehow should be those people, it won't be, no matter how much you suggest otherwise.
Personally, there's no way I'm going to go put my ideas in front of the SE community. From my experience there and the behavior of SE reps in this article, I have no reason to believe anybody will do anything but argue until I leave. I'm a little sad to think that SE's on the slow road to doom, but I've got better things to do then to try to sweep back that particular tide with my very modest broom.
If you want your complaints to reach people who can actually do something about them you'll go where those people are. If you don't really care, that's fine. Keep posting your complaints on blogs and in comments on sites other than the one you're complaining about.
I'm glad this guy's complaints got some attention by staff and volunteers at SE, but that's only because it got to the front page of HN. How many others are out there that will never be found? Post them in the right place and people will read them.
