[sillyfluke]

Failure of 1&2 is why there are flame wars yes, but I thought the motto on here is often "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

> (1) is impossible in a forum that accepts folks from a range of backgrounds and abilities.

This by itself doesn't account for why there is significantly less low-value political comments on here than reddit, to which (1) also technically applies. For (2), taking the best-faith interpretation is already in the HN guidelines. I'm also guessing that the mods let many flagged politically posts by users stay flagged because from experience they "know" which posts will trigger flame wars or low-value comments from the community because of the "past performance predicts future performance" thing. (ie, the unsaid thing is they don't trust the community to obey 1&2 on those posts due to past track record).

I for one would love to read past discussions of historic political events as they happen live from a community that includes industrialists of the past and their well-paid or high-skilled employees as well as people from academia in related fields. So why limit posterity's ability to do the same?