[throwaway72762]

Perhaps we'd be better off not having any country or state or city does X type posts here unless they're about tech. (That won't solve it, though, because any mention of certain cities or states, even in a tech context, brings out the culture warriors.)

[johnnyanmac]

This site doesn't limit posts to only tech. The social culture in this site simply makes technical posts more likely to hit the front page.

I'm not surprised techies are inherently interested in some socio-political stuff. Especially a topic like education where they may feel it should be an egalitarian endeavor (the interpretation of "egalitarian" inevitably causes conflicts, of course).

>any mention of certain cities or states, even in a tech context, brings out the culture warriors.

any mention of any high level topic will bring them out. I don't know what to say about that. As long as they are engaging with the topic and arguments and not devolving into attacking users or spreading hate, there's nothing wrong with a strongly opinionated comment.

[throwaway72762]

There is something wrong with it.

I think about it information theoretically. Oversimplifying, the information content of something is how unpredictable it is in a given channel. On HN, in 2023, the information content of yet another comment ranting about some given city or state or group of people is basically zero. Everyone has seen those comments a thousand times recently and it adds nothing to the discussion.

[johnnyanmac]

I think about it more pragmatically. If we removed a post because we were afraid of an effortless comment, we'd have no posts.

I think the post itself is worth noting and is interesting. It has room for, how you put it, unpredictable responses. I can't control who or what comments on it, only who to engage with or flag. In that regard, it sounds like a moderation problem more than a content problem to me (Maybe a user problem, but I'm assuming that banning 10 specific users doesn't solve the problem). And I feel you're offering a content solution to a moderation problem, which simply doesn't align.

The real question to ask is: is the moderation inadequate? How do we fix it? I feel like asking to ban these posts is giving up to the trolls and provocateurs rather than fixing the underlying problem.

[throwaway72762]

I agree that a ban on the posts isn't the right way. I agree moderation is the right way forward but we need much more active anti flamebait and anti culture war moderation.