zlacker

The issue isn't the topic itself but the amount of repetition around it. Curiosity withers under repetition. You would see exactly the same pattern if the current topic ended up getting repeated a lot: the users who felt most strongly about it ('loyalty to a cause') would want every single article to be on the front page, and would feel like the mods and/or community must be pro-police-brutality if that didn't happen, just as some people feel like we must be pro-communist or pro-China or whatever.

I tried to explain that above, and linked to past explanations of the same points. If you want to take a look at those past explanations, and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be curious to know what it is. Perhaps it would be helpful to describe what these links contain more explicitly:

(1) We try to optimize HN for intellectual curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

(2) Curiosity and repetition don't go well together: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

(3) With submissions on a MOT (major ongoing topic), the main thing we look for is SNI (significant new information): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

As far as I can tell, the complete answer to your question follows from those three points.

>>dang+(OP)
Yes, #3 is the key point, that there are exceptions to the flamewar constraint if there is some new, interesting information for a current major topic..