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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how you can equate keeping politics off of this site to not being involved in politics.

I'm not. I'm saying signal to noise ratio of political discussions on political sites is so low that any rational discussion drowns out in the noise. Plus, most political sites have a clear and strong bias, such that opposing ideas are rarely discussed based on their merits.

Also, many techies who otherwise would not engage in political discussions (due to aforementioned reasons), can bounce off ideas here. I'm not claiming that HN becomes a political discussion forum, I'm saying downvoting legitimate political discussions for being political is taking it too far.

[Edit: missed a word and it bothered me enough to edit the post.]

> I'm saying signal to noise ratio of political discussions on political sites so low that any rational discussion drowns out in the noise.

And you'd like to bring that here?

I'm not trying to be rude or condescending here, but if you read my reply in its entirety, you'll find the answer to your question.

The connection you aren't making is that politics leads to flame wars, on the internet. "Politics" regards deeply held beliefs people hold about how the world ought to be run. Also, the same discussions tend to be run over and over on ad infinitum. Hacker news doesn't need it. It does well by having a tight focus.

Your point is well taken. But tech discussions can also lead to flame wars and HN seems to handle those rather well. I for one am interested in what this community thinks about many subjects. Including politics.

The site has guidelines. Please reread them.

It's confusing that you would direct posters to the guidelines while willfully disregarding the guidelines yourself, and call the guidelines "stupid."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3405357

The guideline I'm referring to here is not stupid.

The "don't comment about flagging" guideline is. It's meant to eliminate pointless arguments about what is or isn't germane to the site, much like how you're asked not to comment about being downvoted. But flags are invisible, and the number of people flagging is dwarfed by the number of people upvoting threads about Ron Paul's newsletters, so that the only way for it to leave the front page of the site (precipitously, if you didn't notice) is admin intervention.

Commenting on this post in the first place was stupid, since the story already got buried. I just felt bad for 'davidw, and I'm a nerd, so when someone says "I think HN is in fact a great place to talk about politics", it's hard for me to resist commenting that it's by charter not a place to talk about politics.

I'm answering in detail because you seem to follow my comments, and I don't want you to think I'm blowing you off. I'm not. I don't know you or have any problem with you personally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com