zlacker

What about adding a separate "flag as politics" option to stories? That way, if enough people feel that it is off-topic for the HN front page, it could get banished to a separate news.ycombinator.com/politics area. Not deleted, just removed from the front page and easily accessible to anyone who wants it.

>>gcv+(OP)
I really like your suggestion. It could be extended even further.

If readers are willing to tag stories not just as "good" or "bad" but with categorical labels, then suddenly the news aggregator "knows" a lot more about the data its serving up. You could have categories at the top, preferential sorting for users, and more.

>>crassh+m7
I came here to say this and can't believe I had to scroll down so far. All you need are accurate tags and a way to filter by them. There is no point punishing people for submitting or voting up something the community is not interested in. Just make sure they tag it correctly so that it can be found or ignored according to reader's preference.

Note this discussion is exactly akin to deletionism on wikipedia – if we can categorise information effectively, why reject any of it?