[susan_hall]

"when a community and its moderators tend toward free-speech absolutist positions."

But oddly, this doesn't describe HN, because another aspect of the moderation is in favor of blandness, for the sake of avoiding flamewars. In college I was taught that good writing entailed taking strong positions, but the moderation here sometimes sees strong positions as being the same as flaming.

[adrienne]

Well, yes, they also want everyone to be "civil", as though that's the highest ideal to aspire to. As though it's ever "civil" to, for example, call for the denaturalization and deportation of all Jewish people (as one very prominent HN member recently did), no matter how polite a tone one takes in doing so.