I've seen a lot of very interesting, usually quite short comments on politics-related threads in the past few weeks, that were posted less than ten minutes prior and already grayed out and marked "[dead]". In each instance, the user was not using inflammatory language at all, yet HN was implicitly saying "yeah we're not going to allow discussion on this topic." I'm sure there's Very Good Reasons(TM) for this but it always feels like wasted opportunity for interesting, out-of-the-box discussion.
> In each instance, the user was not using inflammatory language at all,
Downvotes are not only for inflammatory language; a comment can be a negative contribution to the signal-to-noise ratio, and even violate the commenting guidelines, without using inflammatory language.
Ah. HN is special: they punish political discussions. It's unfortunate, even tragic in my opinion. They allow it sometimes if there's specifically a tech or science-related topic very very closely attached.
I avoid poking the moderator lions (I used to post political articles maybe a year or more ago), but I do wish HN would have another view of that particular topic. It's rather unavoidable that adults (and we are adults), highly-educated ones at that, would sometimes slip into politics when science or tech news (or legal news about tech or science) is discussed.
But yes, you're generally right about that.
I think emotive political discussion is useless, but rational policy discussions aren't useless.
