zlacker

Generic tangents are indeed against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and there's a long body of explanations about why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... If you take a look at that and there's still something I haven't addressed, I'd be curious to know what it is.

It's important that moderation based on "political flamebait" not simply reduce to the political preferences of the moderators. We work consciously at that, and have years of practice. I don't think there's any political position that we haven't moderated (and even banned) users for expressing in ways that break the site guidelines.

One dynamic that affects this is that when people are disagreeing with the majority, they often feel defensive, which causes them to lash out more in ways that break the site rules more. Then we moderate them for that, which makes them sure that they're being moderated because of their views, which makes them more defensive and lash out even more. This is a tricky one. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...