Probably user flags. This article fits the definition of "off topic" per https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Yeah, what the heck? This one needs to be discussed, and it's directly relevant to Hacker News. The rule of law is critical for anyone interested in new business formation.

I've been looking at this comment for the past 5 minutes, and I really can't tell if you're joking or not.

I believe flags push content from the front page. I went to check Lists > Active to see if there was an HN thread on this, because I expect politics to get flagged off the front page of Hacker News.

(Granted, I just think this is "politics" because there's been several events I've expected would end any normal president, but haven't, so...I just really don't know anymore)

...and now page three?? Those flags really need to be discounted, this is simply ridiculous.

It does seem strange that it's down so low. I can understand the general argument that some mainstream news isn't sufficiently hacker-oriented, but the goings-on at the FBI seem quite relevant to the community.

>Why is this on the second page of HN, and not pole position?

It's mainstream politics.

IIRC there's admin mechanisms for ensuring that less HN-niche-specific content doesn't get overwhelmed by more general news. Basically weighting things by how relevant it is to the overall vision for what HN's content should be.

Because this does not need to be posted on HN or even should be. However you stand on this issue doesn't matter. HN is not a site for political discussions. Go to Reddit if you want that.

What is HN for? I thought it was intellectual discourse and news with potential ramifications that affect the population at large.

I hope you don't answer with "tech" because there are certainly non-technical stories here. And I also hope you don't answer with "science" because there are non-scientific stories as well.

Sure, there are some lesser-known political news items that belong on HN. But this story is on the front page of ever news site in America.

From the submission guidelines: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

I think "probably off-topic" is different from strictly "off-topic". I do remember that from the guidelines, though also from the guidelines:

> Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

I think seeing historically uncommon/rare events unfold also falls under gratifying one's intellectual curiosity (though I admit this might be a stretch in this particular story). Additionally, there are multiple stories that pop up (once or twice per day, from my anecdotal experience) that are also stories that'd be covered on TV news.

But the quality of the discussion on Reddit is poor. We come to HN because people do their homework here and we want to know their opinions.

Being a Philosophy grad, I feel compelled to argue that everything is political.

Being a regular lurker, I completely see and agree with your points.

I'm sure the mod team will respond to this eventually - but flags and downvotes are taken into account quite a bit to combat rampant upvote-rings.

there's a mechanism to damper but not totally remove some kinds of posts, possibly involving manually mod intervention

http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

Wow...I was extremely surprised to see this as well.

I was just about to write this exact comment. Thank you for doing this and saving me the effort! At the time of writing, this should have been #2 on HN.