[tomhow]

Banning political discussion was briefly tried here, nearly a decade ago. It failed, but it did reveal (or, remind) that there's no way to get a community like HN to agree on where the line should be between "politics" and "everything else", and that indeed that very question is itself political. So, there will be no more attempts to ban political discussion here. There will just be continued emphasis on the guideline that only stories that contain "significant new information" are considered worthy of discussion on HN.

But we do ask you and everyone to heed the guidelines, particularly these ones:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

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