And as for the contract, presumably it was also signed by management, not just the union.
"Non computer" stuff is often ok if it's just some random, interesting thing that's "food for the brain", but when you get into politics and economics (at least some kinds of economics) and stuff like that, it's just poison.
But, alas, I think this is correct. This is a terrible forum for discussing political issues -- because the signal-to-noise in politics is very low (any political discussion is mostly about team-building, horse-trading, and tooth-baring, not problem-solving or analysis and certainly not software or technology) and we don't have the time to wade through waist-deep piles of personal statements, deal memos, and threats; because this site draws people from very diverse political backgrounds who will take a very long time to reach equilibrium if they start team-building, horse-trading, or baring their teeth; but mostly because the place just works better if there's some focus. It helps us to know when to shut up.
I interpret PG's mission statement not as an attempt to ensure that "anything of interest to anyone smart" is on topic, but as a signal that he doesn't want to be the Big Man who sets the agenda for news.yc. He wants the community to do that. And we have: political discussions get discouraged (using our polite jargon: "That's too reddit for this site") and I personally strive to limit my team-building, horse-trading, and tooth-baring efforts to the slyest possible implications. For example, I'm going to go mod up edw519.
It's not as if there are no other political forums on the web.
I understand that to someone who saw what happened to reddit, the sight of words like "Obama" or "Union" in a title is very alarming. But not all stories with those words in their titles are boring political ones.
Don't worry, I won't let News.YC go down that road. I'll munge the voting algorithm before I let that happen.
I like hearing what the people on this site have to say about those types of issues and if they hold any relation to your businesses and strategies, even if they are 'off-topic'.
I actually think that 'boring' isn't the problem though. Boring stuff is easy to ignore. Political stories, on the other hand, are easy for everyone to have an opinion on, and get excited about. This tends to draw people in who otherwise might refrain from commenting... basically what happened to the reddit community. There were initially some political articles with the rest, and they were pretty good, and a decent mix of liberals and libertarians. Then it hit a tipping point, and that stuff completely drowned out the rest of the site.
I trust that you'll ensure that doesn't happen, but part of the equation isn't necessarily better algorithms, IMO, but trying to foster a community spirit of "let's avoid these things for the sake of the site's quality".
My recollection with reddit was that it was a 'tipping point' sort of process, and it went fairly quickly from being good to full of politics articles with roving bands of morons voting down everything they disagreed with.
The other thing is: if you want to discuss the election, or Iran, or Iraq, or unions, or the economy, you can do that on just about every forum on the internet. But if you want to discuss, say, VC-backed vs bootstrapped businesses, or how much stock an eighth employee should get, or [I dunno, insert third example here], there are very few places where you'll find a critical mass of people who know what they're talking about.
I was surprised to read this because your comments have usually seemed very good to me. But then I ran across http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=242733 - so I'll concede the point on that thread. :)