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It's absolutely a slippery slope. Once you've established the mechanism to harass people over trash cans, next it's the color of their house, the shape of their windows, where they park their cars on their own property, if they have a scrap wood pile, and on-and-on. And then before you know it, you have the Nextdoor-powered housing gestapo.

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It's absolutely a slippery slope.

Except that it isn't - and you yourself have slipped into a classic fallacy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

Slippery slope is only a fallacy when there's little to no evidence that you'll fall down the slope. When there is evidence or logic showing that it truly is slippery, it's not a fallacy anymore. Even from the article you linked:

> The strength of such an argument depends on whether the small step really is likely to lead to the effect

Some would say it is very likely for power-tripping HOA members to continue sliding down the slope.

Some would say is neither evidence nor logic.

My mistake for joining a conversation in which the local neighborhood improvement association was literally compared with the Gestapo.

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