Because repetitive flamewars make the rest of HN flamey and worse, and enough of it can burn the whole place down - this is a thing that happens to forums and H

Because repetitive flamewars make the rest of HN flamey and worse, and enough of it can burn the whole place down - this is a thing that happens to forums and HN is explicitly built around the premise of fending that off for as long as possible. It's also intended as an "unsiloed" online community - there are no sub-hns, we all look at the same stuff and react to and discuss the things on the front page. There is a big subset (I think easily the majority) who care about the nature of HN - a nerd forum of mostly nerd-curiosity things and don't want it changed to something else. A site for discussing current news/political events would be something else.