If I remember correctly, not so long ago dang was editing out posts about ongoing armed revolt in Russia - a country that started largest war in Europe in recent history. And yet there is a post about minor policy decision in one of the 50 states.
I'm not surprised techies are inherently interested in some socio-political stuff. Especially a topic like education where they may feel it should be an egalitarian endeavor (the interpretation of "egalitarian" inevitably causes conflicts, of course).
>any mention of certain cities or states, even in a tech context, brings out the culture warriors.
any mention of any high level topic will bring them out. I don't know what to say about that. As long as they are engaging with the topic and arguments and not devolving into attacking users or spreading hate, there's nothing wrong with a strongly opinionated comment.
I think you can argue there's an interesting new phenomenon here. By these rules, I'm guessing the original "Russia attacks Ukraine" post would be allowed, but not the 50th update on the war.
I think about it information theoretically. Oversimplifying, the information content of something is how unpredictable it is in a given channel. On HN, in 2023, the information content of yet another comment ranting about some given city or state or group of people is basically zero. Everyone has seen those comments a thousand times recently and it adds nothing to the discussion.
I'm sure someone will glibly informs me that "everything is political". So please tell me how "High-Performance server for NATS.io, the cloud and edge native messaging system"[1] is political like this discussion about controversial public policy. Clearly, and thankfully, there is a spectrum.
[1] >>36820544
I think the post itself is worth noting and is interesting. It has room for, how you put it, unpredictable responses. I can't control who or what comments on it, only who to engage with or flag. In that regard, it sounds like a moderation problem more than a content problem to me (Maybe a user problem, but I'm assuming that banning 10 specific users doesn't solve the problem). And I feel you're offering a content solution to a moderation problem, which simply doesn't align.
The real question to ask is: is the moderation inadequate? How do we fix it? I feel like asking to ban these posts is giving up to the trolls and provocateurs rather than fixing the underlying problem.