zlacker

>>dang+(OP)
A submission on climate change was flagged and removed due to these political guidelines. Is this really considered political? Wouldn't it be more justified to call it 'scientific'?

How is anyone supposed to realistically draw the line between what is political and what is not? Couldn't any topic in the world be related back to politics one way or another?

This seems like a blatant plot to censor 'unwanted' topics and articles. A huge downvote from me.

>>jc_811+gp
If it's the one I recall, it was about "how to talk to climate change deniers" or something like that. I flagged it (dang says to overflag rather than underflag in this regard anyhow). I'd have a hard time categorizing it as "not political". It's a charged political topic, the details of that conversation had nothing to do with technology, and almost entirely were about "how to argue with the people you disagree with" who happen to almost entirely belong to a single political party.

>>ocdtre+Hr
I do see what you're saying however, climate change is not a political topic in itself. It is a scientific topic that has to do with the world getting warmer.

The article was not "how to argue with people you disagree with" but how to connect with an audience who does not believe in a scientific consensus due to misinformation. In fact the point of the article had nothing to do with arguing (or political parties), but rather empathetically connecting with an opposing viewpoint.

This is exactly what I meant from my parent comment. Because a topic has been hijacked by political parties we can't bring it up? Climate change = science topic. It is a well documented phenomenon that 97% of the world's climate scientists agree on [1].

Being on either side of the political spectrum is irrelevant here, as at its core this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with science.

[1] http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

>>jc_811+hu
I sympathize with the sentiment you express here. In some ideal world where people are purely rational beings this might be the case. However, that's not the world we live in, and empirically has not been the case here on HN. You can see that on any climate change thread (at least any I've seen here). You mention in another comment that anything can be eventually connected to politics. I agree. And unfortunately some members will always make that connection rather than fighting against it to have a civil, constructive discussion. There are plenty of interesting topics that don't slip as easily into inflammatory political back-and-forth. Avoiding those that do seems prudent and which is what the HN guidelines explicitly state. And that's what the detox week is trying to reinforce.