A topic that gets ugly here sometimes and where no one ever has anything new to say is genes, nationality, and IQ.
Meta discussion is a very different type of flame topic. It's also been extremely important to defining the character of this board so seperating it MetaFilter style is a drastic step. How can we discourage metatalk when it is annoying but allow it when it is interesting?
But I take your point.
In terms of meta discussion; all that is fine. I just mean it should be considered "non gratis" to bring up flamey meta topics. Like Ban TC and so forth. It's been discussed a billion times before and always leads to flaming.
EDIT: I also love the rule that says if you've been here for less than a year dont moan about thinks going reddity - that's another pet-hate meta topic of mine :(
Respectfully agreeing, but sharpening the definition, I would say that the topic rarely gets ugly here on HN (it gets terribly ugly most of the time elsewhere online) and that I personally had a lot of new things to say on that topic the first few times I posted on it here. I do research on that topic
http://learninfreedom.org/iqbooks.html
that most other online participants have never bothered to do.
No one got angry or passionate or flamey as I saw it... the topic never made it much onto the main page and was a nice discussion.
Im not disagree with the sentiment "avoid flame topics" - I just dont think that is a good example.
A better one would be the current TC article on the main page (and all the boring meta discussion on "ban techcrunch" and flaming about pg & ma being buddies).