I've noticed that there's a new kind of "political correctness" which, quite paradoxically, maintains that complaints about sexist and racist behavior cannot even be discussed (on the grounds that political correctness is somehow more abhorrent than the behavior that is being critiqued)
I would guess that any given technology-related topic is deeply deeply boring to a significant slice of the HN readership but we don't flag them just because cloud computing or database design is not a personal interest. We know that if it's a subject we find boring we can just not read it. It's the "sexism in technology" posts that are reflexively flagged and to me that suggests something more than boredom is at work, perhaps an unease with the whole topic. As if certain people can't even stand the idea being discussed anywhere around them.
There have been plenty of sexism in technology posts recently, many of which were not flagged and got many up votes and spent some time on the first page.
But something with a stupid subject line ('OH HAI SEXISM' or whatever it was) is going to be flagged very quickly by lots of people. Especially if there have been lots of sexism in tech threads recently, especially if there have been threads about the same company recently.
By "boring" people don't mean "not interesting to me"[1] they mean "unlikely to generate useful or interesting discussion". People tend to know exactly what they think about some subjects (Abortion, circumcision, "middle east problem", etc.). Thus, discussions about those subjects tend to have people talking at each other, not listening to each other, not sharing information. There are many places to have those discussions. It's nice that HN is free of that kind of discussion.
It affects our industry and a number of people care about such issues. Would you say that SOPA articles should be killed because politics are boring (or a waste of time)?
After the first one? Yes. This is the reason I unfollowed r/technology over on Reddit, it's the same stuff (ACTA and SOPA and PIPA! Oh my!) day in, and day out. I appreciate being informed about badly written laws that could impact the internet and its users.
What I don't appreciate is echo-chamber hand-wringing over how horrible a certain law is, day in, and day out. Yeah, I agree with the folks saying the laws are crap, but there's not going to be any productive discussion there - just a group bitchfest, which while cathartic, gets precisely nothing done.
Put another way, it gets boring after the third time or so.
"Politics" is not "political correctness". Don't let the similarity in words confuse. Sexism in technology has nothing to do with politics (or only in the most broad sense of the word, in which case everything is "political")
In my opinion it is essentially a political issue. Isn't all politics essential debate about what is right and wrong. Is it right if farmers get subsidies? Is it right to enforce trade embargoes? And so on. Some issues might seem to us to be so clear cut that it seems obvious what is right, but judging by the discussions, not everybody agrees.
It doesn't state that politics are off topic. It states that most stories about politics are off topic. Two very different things.
edit: For example, Language Log will often go into detail on campaign trail gaffes from a linguistic perspective. That's in the realm of politics, but I think you'd agree it fits on HN.
