zlacker

That's gratifying to the people who are curious about that topic, but it has the effect of starving other topics of oxygen. Worse, politics are divisive, and people that might genuinely enjoy spirited debates with each other on less charged topics are instead driven apart.

If you watch the moderation actions on this site, you'll see people corrected every day for using the site solely for nationalist or political or ideological flamewar. I can't think of many times anybody has ever been called out for problematical linguistics flamewar, or for using the site solely to litigate a particular way of writing SQL queries, or for using the site solely to talk about quantum mechanics.