This is a problem in community sites that want to keep their focus. For example, politics stories are not welcome on HN, even if people here want to discuss it.

This is a problem in community sites that want to keep their focus. For example, politics stories are not welcome on HN, even if people here want to discuss it. Why? Because, in any place that people congregate, they like to talk about unrelated. Unfortunately, if you don't do the tree trimming, the site will degenrate into something else. For example, see how Reddit is almost a completely different site from five years ago(and not in a good way to me) and there is almost no way to fix it after the fact. So while you have my sympathies that you were collateral damage, I can definitely understand why the moderators did what they did.