The recent debate is just one out of a number of posts/comments that have been ongoing for months. (I actually like the quality of submissions here.)

Agreed - on both points. I guess I took the removal of Prakash's submission from the front page to mean: point taken, let's move on.

I actually almost did this a month ago, but for whatever reason it slipped my mind. That just kind of reminded me.

I was writing a comment of my own till I found myself using the phrase "knee-jerk" ;-). The challenge of "social news" is pretty well like the challenge of open-source -- how to keep communities together long enough to create something great.

"And please don't take this as an attempt at some sort of great schism of the audience here, it's not. I'll still surf this site no matter how popular NHN gets."

It didn't seem to me a knee jerk reaction to the quality of submissions, but rather a public service because people are understandably complaining about political posts being made that are not "hacker news".

The recent debate was killed. People who did not happen to log in during the right couple hours in the US morning didn't see it.

I think the problem has more to do with sarcastic comments - people take them personally and start useless wars, and then memes.

Yeah, people totally take them "personally"and start "useless wars."