Funnily enough I just finished responding to someone who makes the opposite complaint about us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403907. Notice that word "always", which both of you use. Interesting, no?
People with strong passions on a topic always feel like the moderators are against them. (As you see, I'm not immune to "always" perceptions either!)
I wish we could do something about that—I don't enjoy having so many people, from all sides of every divisive topic, feeling like we're against them when we're not. However, after years of observing this and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it's inevitable. The cognitive bias underlying it is just ironclad. We all share this bias, which is why your complaint and the complaint of someone on the opposite side are basically the same.
It's true that HN has hosted several major threads about Israel/Gaza, but it's also true that many (perhaps a hundred times as many) submissions on the topic have ended up flagged and we haven't turned off the flags. I don't see an "always" in there.
As for Saturdays—that factor is so far from affecting how we moderate HN that I had to puzzle for a bit over what you might mean. Nor does this discussion strike me as one-sided. People wouldn't be disagreeing with each other if it were.
dang I cannot respect you enough. Thank you. I have strong feelings about Palestine and learned quite long ago how powerless my rhetoric is. Although I believe I see the truth, it's clear the world needs yet more time. The only thing that must be done now is to facilitate discourse and to leave the flow of information unimpeded. Time will humble us all.
I would be very surprised if the majority, or even a significant fraction, of those who are on the "Israel" side were observing Jews. Jews are probably a minority of Israel-supporting commenters, and observing Jews are, in my experience, a minority of these Jews.
That's a pretty serious accusation, and I don't think you can actually back that up with anything.
Online, pretty much any time Israel is discussed, the majority of commenters (or articles) are anti-Israel. Regardless of why you think that is, it's just a fact. You can't blame dang for that.
You don't decide what's on topic or the spirit of HN. If anyone does it's Deng, who you're arguing with. Sorry you feel the need to decide what adults can talk about.
I've very well aware who Dang is (clearly you don't, at least write his name correctly). You have a lot of venues to vent on reddit, facebook, twitter etc.
Clearly Dang is biased and therefore he bends the guidelines:
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
Maybe you should have a bit more intellectual humility. "Clearly Dang is biased" (emphasis mine)? You might be right, you might be wrong, but I for sure don't think you can be certain of dang's motive here, especially considering lots of people on the "other side" of this issue feel he's biased against them!
I believe the majority of stories are voted on, and flagged, by the community. If the community decides these are stories worth discussing, I think they fit within the guidelines of HN. Stories about the Russia/Ukraine war also appear. So do stories about US politics. In all of these threads some people complain that they're off-scope, but apparently enough of the community wants to talk about them that they sometimes get upvoted.
That's not clear at all. What is clear is an apparent impulse to shut down an unfavourable discussion and throw unproven accusations. There are lots of articles on non-tech posts on HN, you haven't shown he's unfair.
