I know there's this convenient meta-rule that says we can't discuss the rules, but this site really needs to scrap the concept of an "ideological rant". It pre-supposes the existence of non-ideological moderators and posters, a false assumption, which means it is only ever applied in one direction - there are lots of far more ranty and ideological things posted here which are left well alone, because they agree with the increasingly rather odd Silicon Valley (but not rest of America) social norms.

The OP posted interesting insights from his time in a small totalitarian state. He also drew comparisons to the writing style of Gizmodo. This sort of post has value to me, even if it might not be right, because it makes me think about new topics and existing topics in new ways. It merits further discussion and analysis, not downvoting, flagging, and being ticked off by moderators for being "ideological".

But this is one instance of a wider issue, that moderation and flagging in discussions of Google's diversity-related woes is often wildly inconsistent for no apparent reason. Slashdot associates adjectives with votes and moderation decisions, something maybe HN could use. I now routinely expand hidden posts and have showdead switched on because the ratio of useful and well written flagged posts to genuine spam or nonsense is so unbalanced. There's hardly any genuine spam or trolling here.

Other examples - there's a post further up by calculusftw that's dead for no apparent reason, as the post itself seems calm, well written and to present a reasonable point of view that is repeated by other posts elsewhere. Another post by nodesocket compares the management styles of Google vs other bay area tech firms and claims differing management style is related to the internal culture - it is both flagged and dead, again for no apparent reason.