[tptacek]

My politics are closer to Occupy's than to the Tea Party's, by a big margin. I'm not asking you to flag the story because I have a problem with the politics.

I'm asking you to flag this story because the argument for it being on the site is a slippery slope that also includes the fundraising dynamics of the Iowa GOP caucus.

Like I said earlier: stories like this have a systemic advantage over most real "hacker news" topics. A "Comparison of 6 USB Stick Micro Dev Boards" --- unquestionably more germane to the site than this --- is welcome by everyone, but passionately supported by few. Occupy (or Tea Party) advocacy is largely unwelcome on the site by charter, but passionately supported by enough people to peg stories to the top of the front page.

The result is a site that looks more like 2008 Reddit than 2008 HN. In fact, because HN is doing such a good job attracting the Slashdot "Your Rights Online" crowd, we're seeing more and more stories for which Reddit threads are better than HN's.

I used to think the big problem with 'pg's guidelines were that it was squishy about politics; it should, I thought, be rewritten to say "No politics, no religion, no cute pictures, ever." I still think that. But the better thing for the guidelines to say is even simpler:

No advocacy stories.

[tobtoh]

I agree with your 'no politics' stance (although does SOPA opposition fall under that?), however, I read the article more as a 'tactics developed by accident' than a Occupy advocacy thread. I guess we have slightly different thresholds on the same slippery slope.

Having said that, I definitely prefer an article on micro dev boards than protest tactics.

[tptacek]

Paul Graham clearly likes the SOPA threads. I pick my battles. He owns the site, he's entitled to use it to advance his causes. (My politics overall are leftish, but my politics on SOPA aren't within a mile of the rest of HN).

[marshray]

SOPA seems about as directly relevant to internet startup business as an issue can get. It's not tax or social policy or political campaigning... it's impending legislation that affects the way people have to configure their servers.

So I would support a ban on most political discussion here as long as the very few relevant things like SOPA are exempt.