Comment by danielweber

Sites that don't let in new users are as bad as sites that that themselves go completely to pot.

It's possible to have civil political discourse, but it takes a lot of effort, much more than maintaining the entire rest of a site. You can't do it by tweaking things here and there, you need active moderators who can maintain cool heads themselves about topics they are passionate about.

I don't think it's worth HN spending that effort, and what's more important it doesn't look like HN wants to spend that effort.

If you want a swimming pool, you have to maintain it. If you can't, fill it in. HN should either invest a lot more maintenance on political posts, or take a very very heavy ax to them.