President Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey
npr.org
npr.org
(Not sure why it's already down to 2nd page despite 408 points in 1 hour!)
If 500-point stories on hot topics were dispositive, HN would be a 500-point-stories-on-hot-topics site. It isn't that kind of site, and intervention is required to keep it from going that way.
This is a clear case of 'if they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic', so it's worth dwelling on. It doesn't mean the story is unimportant (on the contrary), but that it doesn't fit the mandate of the site. Sometimes there are exceptions, and this isn't one.
I know the guidelines object to Most stories about politics ... unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon, but that is enforced very unevenly. The top story, last I looked, was about politics, as are many others.
I know moderating is thankless, so many thanks. :)
P.S. IMHO it would be useful to answer on the guidelines page or FAQ. Answers in a thread probably won't be seen by most readers; for all I know, you've already answered several times.
EDIT: For those interested, here is some recent discussion of it by dang, but not really addressing this question directly.
edit: to add more content, we may be witnessing history here. I think it would be a huge mistake for us to stick our heads in the sand in a misguided effort to avoid politicized discussions.
Is there a way to find the old thread? I value the discussion this community has to offer.
ETA: Thank you both
Um, no. the guidelines define "on-topic" as "anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
The fact that so many people upvoted the stories means there is an overwhelming desire to talk about them.
HN doesn't run on upvotes alone, so this argument doesn't prove anything. It's a constitutional democracy, with plenty of checks and balances to try to keep the system from running overheated.
In this case the story fell squarely in the "most" of "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics"—why? because there's too little information in it to count as intellectually interesting. Indeed, if a story's entire information content fits in its title, that's a bad sign for HN suitability.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
There are a zillion posts by moderators that go into great detail why 'lots of people upvoted it' is not a criterion for something being a good fit for the site.