Comment by dcminter

> Those kinds of destructive conversations then colour the other non-political discussions.

How so? I honestly don't see what mechanism could lead to that. Are you saying that people would remember user names they disagreed with on political topics they care deeply about, hold a grudge, and then that would "color" their reply to someone (who is their "political enemy") about code etc.? I mean, I get the idea that people might be petty and personal, but how would they express that in an non-political topic? What is this "coloring"? Can you give an example?

I do see the opposite being possible, easily: if people aren't allowed to discuss something like Elon's Hitler salute in a dedicated topic freely, then they'll probably use the opportunity to bring it up in other topics about something else Musk/SpaceX/Tesla did. I see this all the time, for every topic where I'm bothered that discussion is flagged, it's a.) still discussed by people arriving there via search, and b.) brought up in orders of magnitude more unrelated threads, usually garnering approval rather than downvotes. It's HackerNews after all, not StartTheWizardAndClickOKNews after all.