Alright, but at the same time, HN is letting through fundamentally political articles, such as the "How ‘big law’ makes big money" one, which isn't even tangentially related to tech.
When HN does so, and concurrently says that's not OK material because it baits flames, how are we supposed to know the limits of our public participation as commenters, with those conflicting messages?
If an article is technical, people will tend to respond technically; if the article is political (in this case, at its root: industrial relations), people will tend to respond politically.
Inevitably, there is political overlap in many of the articles that get posted here—some more, some less. But when there's more, it's particularly important that people stay within the spirit of the site and avoid posting in the flamewar style. Note this rule: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
You're right that it's a tricky situation to navigate when some political topics are allowed, and yet we're still trying to have discussion that doesn't degenerate. I've written a lot in the past about how we approach this. Maybe take a look? If you have questions that I haven't already answered in there somewhere, I'd like to know what they are.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html