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Why isn't this ever upheld anymore?

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points.




It's upheld all the time. The proportion of that stuff is no greater than it used to be.

As pg once put it, "note those words most and probably". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380


In writing you call those "weasel words":

"words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that a specific or meaningful statement has been made"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

Essentially, if you were being honest, you would just say on topic is whatever we decided it is, since the intentional ambiguity basically comes down to that.


Throwing what seem utterly baseless accusations of dishonesty and bad faith ('intentional ambiguity', 'aimed at creating an impression that' etc), and somehow you're the good guy here?

Would somehow "Topic X is never allowed" be somehow better? That would be silly, but even then there would be arguments about whether a story was topic X. Well, anyway, that guideline seems sensible to me. Not hard to understand why every word is there, for those not blinded by frustration (or whatever you were blinded by when you wrote that). I'm a huge fan of Weasel Words, Don Watson's excellent book, and I can't see a similarity. If you're so sure this place is controlled by evil forces, you should live somewhere else, no?


Can you please stop posting these tedious harangues? You've been doing it a lot, and it's off topic. Since you started doing it after we chided you for breaking the site guidelines, it also seems a bit petty.




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