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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

This story has no more connection to HN than any other political, human rights, or current events story. There's a whole Internet full of venues to have discussions about these kinds of stories. They don't need to be on the HN front page. Which is why the guidelines say they shouldn't be.

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And a comment similar to this shows up every time there's a political, human rights, or current events story. Which is why the guidelines also say this:

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

I thought it was interesting. I imagine that the people who voted it to the front page thought so too.

The bar is higher than "interesting enough to garner upvotes".

Here's what moderator 'dang said about this issue a few weeks back:

Some of you feel that such stories are so important that the flamewars around them should just be allowed to burn. Our experience and observation suggest the contrary: they are bad—existentially bad—for the site. Like fire in general, they lead to more of the same. So the alternative to the current policy is conflagration. The best aspects of HN, in our view, would not survive this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8012898

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