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Comment by wallacoloo | Hacker News Reader

This post was flagged and removed from the front page. Now, I don't know all of HN's policies - I know political posts were not allowed here around election time, and maybe the flagging was due not to the content of the article but rather the exceptional negativity of its comments - but doesn't this seem, on the surface, at least somewhat ironic?

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We've turned off the flags so the discussion can continue. We ask that commenters take particular care to comment civilly and substantively—controversial topics like these are both more spark-provoking and spark-sensitive.

> * know political posts were not allowed here around election time*

It's not just election time: general political articles are discouraged. From the guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

You can view the guidelines here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> maybe the flagging was due not to the content of the article but rather the exceptional negativity of its comments

I think this is likely what's happening. Some topics do not lend themselves to civil and constructive discourse on HN, and as such, some members will flag them as inappropriate for HN.

A few of the HN mods are SJW or at least their sympathizers; clearly not @paulg but a few of the younger members.

Mods didn't flag that post. As for 'SJW', when people accuse us of moderating HN ideologically their logic typically goes like this:

  1. I agree with X.
  2. An X was flagged.
  3. Mods did it.
  4. Mods are anti-X.

There's more than one non sequitur in that.

It is not about mods flagging it, is about not un-flagging it (guilt by omission). But sure, there is a chance that what you said is true.