information gathering and management by the government is a big deal for journalists, people who interact with the government, and ultimately tax payers
I think you're getting into a long-deplored mailing-list tendency for people to ascribe general attributes to their community based on personal preference. "I like ice-cream, lots of other people probably like ice cream, so it's a good post for HN." Journalistic feature-creep, if you will.
My point being that yes, we are all tax-payers more or less, but that doesn't mean everything paid for with tax revenues is germane. Syllogistic posting rationales tend to cast a wider and wider umbrella, sometimes venturing into the realm of slippery slopes.
Actually, i typically err far on the other side. There are many pieces of information that i read hours or days before they appear here or in other social media aggregators, and that has lead me to the impression that i should be contributing more.
Additionally, i do feel that i have some sense of the hacker news demographic having both been a part of it, and watching the sort of content that does generate discussion.
So i'm cognizant of the problem, and i'd like to think that gives me at least some ability to compensate from the bias.
I think you're getting into a long-deplored mailing-list tendency for people to ascribe general attributes to their community based on personal preference. "I like ice-cream, lots of other people probably like ice cream, so it's a good post for HN." Journalistic feature-creep, if you will.
My point being that yes, we are all tax-payers more or less, but that doesn't mean everything paid for with tax revenues is germane. Syllogistic posting rationales tend to cast a wider and wider umbrella, sometimes venturing into the realm of slippery slopes.
EDIT: fixed quote-italics