Why does this matter? Because most of the articles claims are based on "spoke to us" quotes from anonymous staffers which cannot be independently verified. So it falls to the reputation of those publishing and their journalistic integrity/process, and at that point I leave it to you to make up your own mind.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_Weiss#2017%E2%80%932020:_...
I understand the argument you're making, and it's not an obvious call, but I think it comes with more downside than upside, at least for HN. It's a trope of tribal internet argument (I mean in general—not talking about you here) to follow a "DAG of shame" in which you hop from any node to the most shameful associated thing, with the intention of discrediting the node from which you started. The problem is that each of those hops loses a lot of information, and one ends up in places that aren't particularly relevant, like whatever that university project is.
What's bad about this for HN is that it makes threads more generic, predictable, and repetitive. It also polarizes discussion along the most intense axis. All of this makes discussion less interesting and more inflammatory.
So while it's not an obvious call (more like 60-40 than 80-20) I think we're better off as a community to resist the habit of replacing topic X with the biggest or most shameful other-topic-Y that the dots connect to. It's not that there's no value in it, but it's the wrong move, given what we're trying to optimize for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
Following standard ideological grooves to discredit the other tribe's sources is not acting from specialist knowledge in any case. The only specialty at work in such discussion is the specialty of internet battle. That's ultimately just a way to turn every thread into a boring, if intense, flamewar.
One of the things that follows from HN's core principle of intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) is the principle of diffs (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). Diffs are what's interesting. This is the positive formulation of the principle that repetition is bad for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
For topics that burn hot, like political/ideological ones, this "diff" principle implies that discussion is most interesting (and therefore best for HN) when people don't take the obvious path from their own initial position—that is, when they don't repeat the reaction that they've had most often before. That is a hard thing to ask on the hottest topics, which tend to melt into a few (well, two) monolithic piles of tar. But I think it follows from the principle.
Here's another thing that I think follows, and is even harder to swallow. To the extent that someone has strong political/ideological views, if they're not seeing articles on HN that they strongly disagree with, at least semi-regularly, then there's probably something wrong with HN*.
That isn't always great for community spirit because it only takes a few disagreeable data points before the mind starts to defend itself with a "this place sucks" reaction (and there are people on all ideological sides who develop such reactions). I wrote about this here, if anyone wants to read more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
* To ward off one common misunderstanding: that is not a Goldilocks argument for split-the-difference centrism! It's an argument for unpredictability. Since centrism is just as predictable as other ideologies, it should encounter just as much to be put off by.
No, if you look in the site guidelines you'll see that they say "Most" stories on certain themes are off topic, and that word is there intentionally. It allows for exceptions, especially when there's either something interestingly different about a story, or some significant new information to discuss.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
For past explanations about how we think about this in terms of political topics, see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... There are lots of links there to where I've explained this in detail. If anyone has a question that I haven't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Stories drawn from the arts, like music and also literature and painting, or more generally from history, archaeology, you name it, are most welcome here as long as they offer something of intellectual curiosity. So if HN commenters are pushing back on a story just because it's about e.g. music, that would be bad. (But if it were a gossipy story about a famous musician, say, that would be different.)
Sex is its own special case in all things, so we would have to talk about that separately.