The main reason to avoid flamewars is to protect the atmosphere on HN but you can't make the case that if the world is on fire we can just sit here and pretend it isn't happening and discuss the latest tweak to react as though it is the most important thing in the world.
I've long argued for a 'other' category as one overflow method or a homepage that is generic and subject specific pages for those that only want LLM news or Apple. I'm sure we could agree on a 10 level 'top' set with 'All' the default. That's one step closer to Reddit of course, but with the growth that HN has seen over the years you can't continue to pretend that the 'small town' measures still apply to this big city. A lot of this really is just about scale and you need to adapt to scale.
If I were in your shoes, I would consider dang’s response in this thread and contemplate whether this is the correct forum for your style of political analysis.
I did observe some of this activity over the past couple days and note that many of your interlocutors were also flagged, downvoted, etc., and not always for clearly legitimate reasons. I turned on showdead for a while just to follow the plot. So it goes.
I think it’s a good policy (in general, not specific to HN) to match your interlocutor’s effort. There’s no return on investment in any case.
I always have showdead on. I turned it on as soon as I learned that there was such a feature. Even the crypto scam posts amuse me.
I don't feel that I have a particular "style" of political analysis. In the case of ICE I'm not even doing political analysis; it's legal analysis.
I don't like seeing my communities swell with outrage that appears, to me, to be based on propaganda and ignorance. I would not be talking about these topics otherwise. And my defenses are not based in ideology, unless "the terms people are using here describe really serious terrible things, and shouldn't be abused" is an ideology.
I don't like being dissuaded from responding to it, because without any reassurance that it will be cleaned up as off-topic, that comes across to me as suppressing an opposed point of view. That especially galls on platforms that otherwise appear committed to open discussion of contentious topics.
I’m not dissuading or suppressing your point of view, mate. You’re clearly in some distress over this, but feel obligated (honor-bound?) to continue prosecuting your case. It’s a vicious cycle: the harder you hammer on this, the less persuasive you become, and accordingly the less satisfied you’ll be with the state of affairs. That’s all I’m saying.
I've long argued for a 'other' category as one overflow method or a homepage that is generic and subject specific pages for those that only want LLM news or Apple. I'm sure we could agree on a 10 level 'top' set with 'All' the default. That's one step closer to Reddit of course, but with the growth that HN has seen over the years you can't continue to pretend that the 'small town' measures still apply to this big city. A lot of this really is just about scale and you need to adapt to scale.