Please respond to trhway’s response. You’re being the generic HN person that misses historical understanding here. It’s not flamebait to be highly concerned about political developments, please try to understand.
I'm sorry, but everyone who's been around the internet for long has seen how disastrous such single-hop digressions from $very-important-topic into Naziland end up being. The guideline I quoted is written that way for good reason. It's guarding against the blight that most commonly destroys a thread.
I don't mean this personally; I'm sure that trhway is sincere. Sincerity isn't enough. The burden is on the commenter to distinguish the comment from flamebait, and when it comes to Godwin effects the bar for that on HN needs to be high. Otherwise we'll end up with the nastiest, most repetitive and stupidest of flamewar. (The GP comment failed to clear that bar. The response downthread is of course more substantive.)
I'm not denying what you say about political developments. I'm saying that such important things deserve better. There are constraints on what the medium of an internet forum can bring to them, and to maximize what's possible we must respect what is known not to work.
I don't mean this personally; I'm sure that trhway is sincere. Sincerity isn't enough. The burden is on the commenter to distinguish the comment from flamebait, and when it comes to Godwin effects the bar for that on HN needs to be high. Otherwise we'll end up with the nastiest, most repetitive and stupidest of flamewar. (The GP comment failed to clear that bar. The response downthread is of course more substantive.)
I'm not denying what you say about political developments. I'm saying that such important things deserve better. There are constraints on what the medium of an internet forum can bring to them, and to maximize what's possible we must respect what is known not to work.