zlacker

>>dang+(OP)
I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a scientific community, but it is not the case, and even then politics do interact with science, as one can conduct scientific experiments on government decisions, or politics can attack scientific community positions (e.g. climate change).

The way this sounds is that you are more concerned about politics as in people who take party positions and may feel excluded as a group when the majority of the community takes a different position. This is a slightly different issue i.e. party politics, and I think it is fine/a good thing, but it is also important to distinguish the two. This should essentially be under the same umbrella as personal attacks, as they are essentially the same thing.

>>tarikj+34
> head in the sand

There are a ton of other sites where you can follow and debate politics all you want.

I'm starting to stick my nose into local politics here in Bend, Oregon, but there's no reason I need to talk about it on HN. I'm ok with compartmentalizing things: HN for tech/startups/'interesting things', and other sites for other things. I love bike racing, too, and feel that it's the best sport in the world, but I see no need to introduce bike racing articles here.

>>davidw+d6
>There are a ton of other sites where you can follow and debate politics all you want.

But where do you draw the line of what is 'politics' and what is 'cool nerdy tech stuff'?

Is a breakdown of 538's method of poll aggregation too politically charged, even if there's a perfectly good overlap of math and statistics?

If Trump makes an out-of-left-field statement about repatriating corporate money, are we prohibited from talking about how it will affect Apple?

A blanket ban of 'political threads and topics' seem harsh, even if just for a week. I personally haven't found the political content on this site to be out of bounds, considering the monumental political upheavals we've been witnessing over the past year.

>>fnovd+ha
It's a lot like that classical definition of pornography. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. If a topic gets a lot of downvotes this week, it means it crossed the line for a lot of people. Simple :)

>>DougN7+Zi
It's a definition that's ripe to be abused. It means topics can be censored and discussion silenced, not for breaking any specific rule, but by possessing too much of some subjective quality.

>>fnovd+dn
You'll just have to trust the moderators then. They're good people. Maybe they'll screw up a bit, but it's not the end of the world. Too much politics, OTOH, could easily lead to this site going down the drain.