> You missed the rule I was referring to.

Sorry pal, if a clearly political post can appear on HN with copious upmods even though such a post is clearly against guidelines, I can break guidelines as well and meta-comment about its lack of relevancy to HN in general.

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics...If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

You are precisely the type of person I mention in relation to the wikipedia effect.

> ...that of people that feel it is their god-given right to arbitrate some self-selected rules of the community they inhabit and prevent all newcomers from playing in their playground.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The relevant word is guidelines.

Despite the guideline on the topic. There is an very vigorous and ongoing discussion about this effect.

Works Cited:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=303605
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=508801
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575032
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406293
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=164901 (perhaps one of my favorite posts on the topic from about 2 years ago).
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=744475
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=409659
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88898
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76469
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011841
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=994418
and on and on and on...at least since I've started reading HN a couple years ago.

So we can either follow guidelines to the letter, in which case pg should rename that to rules, and we should all flag posts like the China/Copenhagen one (and my posts regarding reddit and about half your posts for not being of interest to business technologists)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011915
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011368
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011306
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011337
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009130
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009177
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007640
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007289
etc.

or your submissions

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007183
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005924
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1002837
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=975046
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=973940
etc.

You even seem aware of this effect yourself http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937446 !

Or we can regard the guidelines for what they are, directors of discussion in this digital salon.

But I can play your game if you like, I can flood HN with garbage submissions to every dog and pony show I find remotely interesting (even against guidelines) to boost my karma and then downvote and flag everybody else who does the same. Or we can use HN for what it's intended for, as a discussion forum for interesting business and technology news.

To my understanding, the modding/submission/flagging system is intended to create interesting discussion, not to create karma.

HN (the community) has to decide if karma is what's important or discussion is what's important. I've already outlined why I think the current system emphasizes karma over discussion. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1013330 I was hoping that HN was not just another reddit/digg.