About three hours ago I posted a brief argument about why one of the US presidential candidates is strongly preferable to the other on five criteria of concern to EAs: AI governance, nuclear war prevention, climate change, pandemic preparedness and overall concern for people living outside the United States. I concluded by urging readers who were American citizens to vote accordingly, and encourage anyone whom they might potentially influence to do so. After about an hour the post had a karma of 23; shortly after that, it was removed from the front page and relegated to 'personal blogposts'. Not surprisingly, at that point it started to attract less attention.
Not having heard of 'personal blogposts', I checked the description, which suggested that they were appropriate for '[bullet point] topics that aren't closely related to EA; [bullet point] topics that are difficult to discuss rationally; [bullet point] topics of interest to a small fraction of the forum's readers (e.g. local events)'. Frankly, I can't see how my blogpost fit any of these descriptors. It focused on the candidates' positions on issues of core concern to EAs, and from the fact that it had a karma score of 23 after an hour, it was obviously of interest to the message board's readership. The remaining possibility--unless there were other unstated criteria--is that it was judged to be on a topic that was 'difficult to discuss rationally'.
If so, I think that's a troubling commentary on EA, or the moderator's conception of EA. My post was clearly partisan, but I don't think any reasonable observer would have called it a rant. This election will almost surely make more difference to most of the causes that EAs hold dear than any other event this year--perhaps any other event this decade. Shouldn't the EA community, if anybody, be able to discuss these issues in a reasonably rational manner? I'd be grateful for a response from the moderator justifying the decision to exclude them.
Upvoted, but I don't think one could develop and even-handedly enforce a rule on community-health disputes that didn't drive out content that (a) needed to be here, because it was very specifically related to this community or an adjacent one, and (b) called for action by this community. So I think those factors warrant treating community-health dispute content as frontpage content, even though it lets a lot of suboptimal content slip through.
I think you may have a point on "positions on EA issues" narrowly defined -- but that is going to be a tough boundary to enforce. Once someone moves to the implied conclusion of "vote for X," then commenters will understandably feel that all the reasons not to vote for X are fair commentary whether or not they involve "positions on EA issues." [ETA: I say narrowly defined because content about how so-and-so is a fascist, or mentally unstable, or what have you is not exactly in short supply. I have little reason to believe that anyone is going to change their minds about such things from reading discussions on the Forum.]
There's also a cost to having a bunch of partisan political content -- the vast majority of which would swing in one direction for the US -- showing up when people come to EA's flagship public square. We have to work with whoever wins, and tying ourselves to one team or the other more than has already happened poses some considerable costs. There is much, much less broader risk on community-health disputes like Nonlinear (one can simply choose not to read them).