That doesn't mean politicized topics can't be discussed—obviously they are and should be, up to a point. But such discussions tend to consume everything else with their flames, so we have to be careful about not letting them take over HN completely.
The best way we've found so far to draw the line is the 'primarily' test. When an account uses HN primarily for intellectual curiosity, i.e. for encountering and discussing interesting things, it's not an abuse of the site to occasionally talk politics too. But if it's on HN primarily for political battle, then—regardless of the politics—we ask the user not to and ban the account if it doesn't change.
This turns out to work well because there's a gap between these two kinds of user. The first kind tends to remain curious and substantive even as topics get more divisive. The second kind tends not only to drop the gloves, but to come armed with talking points and not be interested in conversation for its own sake. The one group fits the purpose of HN while the other does not. There are exceptions, of course. But the rule holds up well enough to be a fair standard for moderation.
More on this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185062, https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... If you'd read those (especially the guidelines) and take the spirit of this site to heart when participating here, we'd appreciate it.
Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it.
If anyone wants to understand how we interpret this rule, the key word is 'primarily' and I've posted about it a lot: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
I don't think you're abusing HN on purpose, but we've given you multiple warnings already. When people either can't or won't use the site as intended, we do end up banning them.
Thanks for saying this. I skimmed my past 6 months of comments and I don't share your view that I'm "using HN primarily for ideological battle". I don't believe I've previously discussed gender issues, either. If anything it looks like I've had a pro-Apple ideology, which hasn't been flagged.
I make a point to be respectful while commenting, but I don't keep an internal quota for the subjects I comment on. I don't want to add noise to a topic I can't contribute to just to drown out my other comments. The moderation is a bit stifling and doesn't feel ideologically neutral. I know moderation is nebulous so I wanted to offer some feedback, regardless of what happens.