[dang]

Could you please stop using HN for ideological battle and flamewar? You've unfortunately been doing a lot of that. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we end up having to ban accounts that do it (regardless of what they're battling for).

Edit: also, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35760334 - that kind of comment is a bannable offense.

[epups]

Ok, got it. I can see how my comments were inflammatory in this thread and will refrain from that in the future.

On the other hand, I think a thread like this one also fits your description of ideological battle and flame war. It is very political and deeply biased, including inflammatory comments about imprisoning and killing people for their political ideology. We see that in threads about religion as well, which are very lightly moderated but contain uncivilised content. If you allow trash and ban the pushback, eventually HN will devolve into Truth social or equivalent when it comes to politics.

[dang]

HN actually has a guideline to address just that: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

We can't exclude divisive topics altogether—that would not be consistent with the mandate of this site (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... for lots of past explanation about why). So we ask users on all sides of divisive topics to respect the site guidelines, and each other, by posting thoughtfully and not collapsing into flamewar.

Everyone with strong passions feels like the other side is posting inflammatory trash and they themselves are merely providing pushback. This feeling is part of the standard equipment that everyone brings to a flamewar, so you can't let yourself be guided by it.

What you need to do instead (<-- I don't mean "you" personally, I mean all of us) is hold yourself to a higher standard and not break the rules even if other people are breaking them badly. If you make a good faith effort to do that, then you can just about compensate for the default bias of feeling like "the other side started it and did worse" and approximately level the field.

[epups]

I see your point of course, it's easy for me to think I'm right and these guys are wrong and they do probably think the same. That doesn't mean that neither of us is correct though. And you do draw the line somewhere. You would not allow a discussion to emerge here on whether pedophilia should be allowed, how Ukraine is actually an aggressor or about how the American elections were stolen - at least it seems that you moderate these topics swiftly. When similarly unhinged political topics emerge from more marginal countries like Brazil or India, I find that the discussion tends to be polarized by the interaction of users who really care about the topic, while most of the community stands aside. The problem is that most of these users are extremists. As a result, these threads devolve into toxicity and are very far from the standards we are used to seeing.

From my part I also contributed to that in this instance. I understand what you're trying to say and in the future I'll try to keep in mind your larger point - even if I firmly believe I'm right and I would like to convince someone, being rude or dismissive does not actually help, and certainly does not foster a good sense of community. So, I'm not trying to excuse the two comments you correctly called me out for.

On the other hand, perhaps you should consider that your own personal bias about what is legitimate discussion and what isn't is obviously limited by your own knowledge pool and bias. I would not expect you to know how close Brazil came to an actual military coup, or that this "Supreme Court dictatorship" discourse is the backdrop of the justification for a possible coup which is still a threat. I don't think much would be lost at all if these discussions are simply suppressed in HN, in the same way I see you delete submissions about the Ukraine war that are very clearly deranged. And if not, you really should not expect a calm, rational discussion starting around a perspective that defends dictatorship or war.

[dang]

I completely agree with you about how little I know, but I don't need to know much to moderate this site according to its guidelines. It's the other way around: people who do know are welcome to comment (and we hope they will!) but only if they stay within HN's rules.

> you really should not expect a calm, rational discussion starting around a perspective that [...]

I don't know about calm or rational but following the site guidelines is exactly what we expect, regardless of how divisive a topic is. As I said in the GP, a divisive topic makes that more important.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html