I took it out because the thread was veering into generic flamewar about Israel. Actually we often remove country names from titles because they trigger people into making more nationalistic comments, which are equal parts indignant and boring.

That's a bit of a pathetic policy if you ask me. In my opinion a country who permits this type of behaviour shouldn't be shielded from the ensuing negative press. If anything it might encourage otherwise unaware citizens to put pressure on the government to do something about it.

I hear you. I agree with your second sentence. But I'm trying to protect HN, not Israel or anyone else. This place is fragile, and when people bring the fires of the world here, it can only take so much.

I wouldn't call that kind of title edit (taking out a country name) a policy. We have an ad hoc bag of tricks and sometimes we use one and sometimes another, depending on what feels needed. Do I know how unsatisfying that sounds? You bet. Do I get how it opens us to accusations of bias? I do, better than anyone else does. But the threads are too complicated to be managed with precise formalizations.

Ack. I can see it's a tricky balance to maintain.

Q.E.D.

Dan, you know what would be cool for HN comments? The ability for each node of a thread to be annotated with topic names. For example, if the node close to the root node here were to be labelled "Israeli politics", I, a user interested in the technical aspects of the topic, can immediately avoid it. This feature will be a killer feature for all topics that have divergent sub-threads! (I haven't thought further than just the annotation by end user feature - so, whether it ought to be at user level or a global one ... I don't know). :-D

Oh, I see, that makes a lot of sense actually. Thank you for your service!

It's not much of a service but I appreciate the kind words.

OT, but scroll down with “showdead” and it should become apparent exactly why. It is HN trying to promote substantive discussion on the topic without devolving into flame war.