[ceejayoz]

What rule is this violating? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html says "anything that good hackers would find interesting" is on-topic, which clearly enough "good hackers" do given the upvotes. The "most stories about politics" clearly doesn't say "all stories about politics", and this one has a lot of relevance to the tech world.

Meanwhile, you're definitely breaking the "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site." rule.

[GlickWick]

> Meanwhile, you're definitely breaking the "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site." rule.

I'm actually replying to a discussion started about flagging.

[dvdfvo]

By complaining that the submission is inappropriate:

GlickWick: I'm unclear as to how this thread is legitimate, personally. Doesn't seem to really fit with HN. I'm no fan of the Patriot Act either, but this belongs somewhere like Reddit.

[GlickWick]

Which was in reply to a question about why the thread was being flagged. This was not an unprompted complaint about an inappropriate submission, this was a reply to a question.

[dvdfvo]

You were still breaking the rules.

[GlickWick]

That is not true. If a user asks a question about the rules or the validity of a post/flagging, it's fine to discuss.

You don't like the fact that I'm criticizing this thread, which is fine, but stop trying to cherry-pick silly reasons to discredit what I'm saying. It's having the opposite effect of what you intended anyways.

[dvdfvo]

Yes it is.

That is just your opinion. Rules are clear on this:

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site.

As you can see, no additional caveats are listed. Therefore you, by responding to a comment which was about incorrect flagging, complained about inappropriate submissions, directly violated the rules.

Your last paragraph is basically just ad-hominem.

I'm ending this "discussion" here and will not be reading your inevitable further comments.

[ceejayoz]

Weasel your way around the point all you like. Again, "What rule is this violating?" Specifically, please.

[dang]

> Weasel your way around the point all you like

Please don't be personally rude on HN.

You're right that the rules do not exclude all politics, only most. GlickWick is right that upvotes alone do not determine HN's front page and about the weakness of the voting mechanism in general.