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Thanks for the explanation. I'm sorry that my misunderstanding of the UI, and some bias around the subject, led to conspiratorial thinking.

I wish the community didn't have such a slim tolerance for discussion of this subject that's not uniformly toeing the progressive line, as I thought this was fair in tone and argument, but if I'm in the minority, it's nothing to go nuts about. I can see both sides.

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Posts about this and related topics get heavily flagged regardless of what side they're on. I don't see the community in toto as driven ideologically one way or the other, though obviously some subgroups are.

We turn the flags off sometimes when an article is particularly substantive. For example, we did that yesterday for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10923885, because that article was factual and had historical value. When we do that, though, it isn't because we agree or disagree ideologically.

It seems more of an effort to retain people working on the project that fall into the protected categories, and losing those people is a real possibility if someone else's negative attitudes get back to them, regardless of whether they're vocal about it.

I'm not sure whether I think the public spaces bit should apply to everyone though. Certainly project leadership should be held to it if that's what they're aspiring to.

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