It is neither desirable nor possible to exclude political topics from HN completely. At the same time, it's important that the site be protected from being overrun and dominated by political topics. Lots of explanation of how we handle this can be found at these links, if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
Well, Sandy Hook did happen. And while NS 1 was blown up, besides a repitition of all arguments we had when it was blown up, Hersh's blog post does not provide anything new, does it?
> The HN guidelines are clear about political topics.
I agree with that guideline. I don't want HN in general to devolve into standard tribal mudslinging.
But I don't believe this is the standard 'breaking news' chum of the day, mostly because of the reputation of the author, though I readily admit the sensationalist title is click-baity.
So far (7 hours after this was first posted) most comments seem to be complaining that the HN users can't flag this away. I found the story interesting, it makes you think about just what the USGov is doing, if it's true or not is somewhat immaterial...the story was an interesting read, whether it was a non-fiction story or not.
If the story isn’t true, then it isn’t just making you think about what the US government is doing. It’s making you fantasize about it based on an unknown person’s political agenda.
Is there a change to the guidelines and should we expect you to not override the ranking system for opposing view points.