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Comment by throwaway8800 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not particularly fond of political discussion on HN, but this particularly political environment is so insane that it ought to be discussed in more and more places. And I am keen on hearing the perspective of HN readers in particular on what this President and government is doing. It's a unique perspective, particularly when the discourse occurs in a community setting, and it ought not to be suppressed in order to preserve romantic ideas about what HN is "supposed" to be.

The guidelines have always stated that we should discuss whatever hackers find interesting. A subset (at least) find these topics interesting and worth discussion on occasion.

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The political intensity has been greater for at least 6 months now, but that's a matter of degree. There's nothing qualitatively new about this issue.

The principle here has been in place since HN's founding (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html) and after ten years of practice I think it's fair to say it's not 'romantic'. The site is what it is because we stick to that principle. It would have decayed years ago if we hadn't, and we shouldn't let that happen now.

Seems an understatement to simply describe the current political climate as an increase in "intensity". I think a mentally ill President on the verge of impeachment and a country on the verge of constitutional crisis is qualitatively different than anything that has been happening since the beginning of HN.

I don't think political discussion needs to be a frequent occurrence, but this outright immediate shutdown of anything ever related to politics when other links that are a lot less important (or not "deeply interesting", as the welcome page notes) dominate the front page as a matter of routine. Links which are often only tangentially related to hacking (at best), seems really odd.

"Outright immediate shutdown of anything ever related to politics" is not at all an accurate description of HN, nor is your "dominate the front page". If you know of a fine supply of deeply interesting stories out there, by all means please submit them.

"Links which are often only tangentially related to hacking" are not only not off-topic here, they're so on-topic as to be celebrated at the very beginning of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Your phrasing rather suggests that you want the very sort of flamewars and partisan battles that we're specifically excluding. If so, HN may not be the website you're looking for. Not all internet forums need to be the same, and I don't see why this one shouldn't preserve its mandate.

I do not find your language or "phrasing" to be particularly warm, but I don't think it precludes us having a productive discussion on the matter. Your statement of me "wanting flamewars" is inappropriate if not just disappointing?

Re: shutdown of anything ever related to politics: I do not recall any political posts, specifically posts related to POTUS, in the last 12 months not being steadfastly flagged and summarily disappearing from the front page. This includes threads where the discussion (up to the point it is no longer on the front page) is entirely reasonable and non-combative, aside from the off-topic comments contained within it about how the "political posts do not belong on HN". On the other hand, people can get into a flamewar about the Apple campus and those posts stay.

There is clearly a dogma that exists about "political posts" those ten years of practice and it's clear we disagree. But that's OK. I'll have to, and can, live with not knowing the political opinions and insights on those matters from HN members.

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