I mean that the HN guidelines use these definitions as to what the site is meant to embody:
> What to Submit
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
So "Most stories about politics..." The guidelines are carefully written. If a story is political but has important tech ramifications, then it's likely on-topic.
Some posts are flagged that shouldn't be and vice versa. It's not a perfect system.
Is there a systemic bias one way or another? I'm not sure. I think people are just sometimes fed up with seeing stuff on HN that they're explicitly trying to avoid when they come here.
> What to Submit
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
So "Most stories about politics..." The guidelines are carefully written. If a story is political but has important tech ramifications, then it's likely on-topic.
Some posts are flagged that shouldn't be and vice versa. It's not a perfect system.
Is there a systemic bias one way or another? I'm not sure. I think people are just sometimes fed up with seeing stuff on HN that they're explicitly trying to avoid when they come here.