Comment by kelnos
9 years ago
Agreed, but I don't think that's a good reason to avoid those sorts of discussions. HN has a much stronger tradition of moderation than most other sites, and while I wouldn't expect discussions involving politics to be perfect, I would still expect bad actors to be downvoted into oblivion.
While on paper your objection stands, I feel that in practice things are different. This I derive from observing and participating in such threads.
The problem is politics is so opinion and status-based that it crosses this magical threshold where even otherwise level-headed people just lose it. It's toxic beyond what even HN's regular moderation mechanisms can handle. The other thing is, it's easy for politics to drown all other topics - political issues speak well to our "someone is wrong on the Internet" instincts, and there's always something outrage-inducing to be posted.
While I personally don't mind an occasional political discussion (and I like when it's not political per se, but more e.g. economical or military-strategy type, in which people post many interesting facts and ways of reasoning I haven't seen before), I wouldn't like those topics to keep dominating the front page (happened a few times in the past).