The article itself was a bit disappointing because it focused on political issues. In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right", as evidenced by the fact that a comment on a controversial topic can easily float near zero points while raking in both upvotes and downvotes. And even those who refer to it as "the orange site" still come back and comment. In other words, HN may be an echo chamber but it is a pretty big one with a lot of voices in it.
I definitely want to give credit to dang and sctb for making it that way. It could have gone differently. In particular, the no-politics argument is basically a fancy way of saying "nothing that challenges the status quo please". [1] I really appreciate them trying to keep the forum in a state where these discussion can at least happen. I would have left long ago if flagging had continued to be used to kill topics.
[1] See, e.g., Prof Ichikawa on how skepticism gets misused to defend the status quo: https://twitter.com/jichikawa/status/1134323822096658433
This is contrasted to denialism which denies claims out of hand. This is not based on scientific data, but gut feeling or motivated reasoning.
Dr. Ichikawa is thus describing denialism in his tweets.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical_movement
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism
edit: Here is an article on the distinction from one of the strongest figures in the skeptical movement, Steven Novella. It even focuses on the topic of climate change.
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/skeptic-vs-den...