[dang]

One has to distinguish the importance of a topic from the quality of internet conversation about it. We moderate for the latter, not the former. Most important topics, including most atrocities, don't make HN's front page, and most things that do make the front page are neither important nor an atrocity.

People tend to respond to activating topics with intense pre-existing feelings. That's understandable—I'm not criticizing it and it would be futile to try to change it. But it does not make for curious conversation, which is what HN is for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Curious conversation is about learning new things, changing one's orientation, and so on. That's one reason why the best HN threads tend to have a whimsical aspect—when a topic isn't high-stakes and one doesn't have a pre-existing position about it, curiosity is the natural state. Not so much otherwise.