I get that you disagree. People disagree about this all the time, often strongly. I doubt there's a single story that every user agrees belongs on HN.
The only unusual thing in this case is the drama you've created about it. We can debate whether a CIA director nomination belongs on HN, but there's no question that the above submission and your comments are breaking the site guidelines. Those are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please read them and follow them when posting here. They're written the way they are for good reasons, based on over ten years of running this place.
No one's questioning the importance of major political stories, by the way. Of course they're important—much more important than most of what gets posted here. That's why we need flagging. Otherwise they would take over the site, and HN would be a completely different place.
HN's mandate is to gratify intellectual curiosity. Not all political stories are off topic, but the ones that only stir up outrage, however justifiably, and don't also gratify intellectual curiosity, are not a good fit.
I haven't created any drama at all. Many people feel strongly about this and have said so, are they all "creating drama" as well, or is it possible people really give a fuck that this torturer will have an incredible amount of power?
>there's no question that the above submission and your comments are breaking the site guidelines
The only guideline I have broken is the one about vote totals, which I was unaware of and which has special relevance here. You could have asked me to remove it, there was no need to allow the whole thread to be flagged over a straw-man.
It is telling that you claim there is 'no question' about this, when people are questioning it all over this thread.
>Not all political stories are off topic, but the ones that only stir up outrage, however justifiably, and don't also gratify intellectual curiosity, are particularly important to flag.
What?? So, no matter how important a story is, if enough people pretend to be 'outraged' the story must be flagged? Please tell me you see the many things that are wrong with that line of argument. What a despicable thing to say.
There are many comments that agree this is worthy of discussion, the least you can do is allow the conversation to happen - the very least.
This is a critical discussion to have. As it stands, conversation on this topic has been strongly suppressed, and rather than being concerned about that, you're patronizing me, accusing me of creating drama, and implying I want HN to work according to my political views. Please take this all a little bit more seriously and recognize that it's nothing to do with me; but all of us, globally.
You felt this story should be on HN. Other users felt it shouldn't be. That's normal. The flags won over the upvotes, indicating that the bulk of the community doesn't agree with you. I don't see why your preference should matter more than theirs, especially since the mandate of the site (intellectual curiosity yes, political flamewars no) at first blush points rather in their favor than yours.
We're always fine to hear counterarguments, but when the 'counterargument' consists of calling names like despicable, etc., merely because HN is behaving the way it always has, you actually create a persuasive reason not to give you what you want: you're showing what kind of discussion would result from doing so.
If you want to influence what discussion takes place on HN, you need to do two things. First, you need to really grok the mandate of the site and make your case based on that. Otherwise your argument will amount to demanding that HN be a different kind of site than it is, which doesn't hold water. And you also need to really grok the values of the site (civility and substance yes, snark and attack no) and demonstrate how the discussion you want can adhere to them by adhering to them yourself. Otherwise you'll have influence all right, but in the reverse direction.
I understand how strong these feelings can be and why. Torture is wrong. If we were to let that determine HN moderation, though, HN would soon become only about that and things like that, which would kill HN. We work to make sure that doesn't happen, but not because we don't care about more important matters.