I realize this is a touchy subject. I don't want to start a dumpster fire of politics, but I think it's something we should (and can!) civilly discuss. Politics right now is a little nuts. No matter what you believe, and (almost) no matter where you are in the world, I think we'd all agree on that. And I'm not going to say any more about it than that.
We've gotten a couple puzzles so far that touch on politics. One of them, I removed quite a while ago because I didn't feel it handled politics in a particularly... respectful way. This isn't the first time something like that has happened, though, and I distinctly remember several cases over the past few years. But they've been relatively rare. However, since the recent U.S. election, we've gotten another handful posts that have... made me/us a little uncomfortable. Not inherently bad, but just... rubbed me the wrong way.
I don't want Puzzling to become political. We're here to be friends, and have fun solving puzzles with each other and for each other, learning how to do that better all the while. I'm worried that recent events will inspire an increasing number of politically-oriented puzzles, and I'm worried that this is going to have a negative effect on the site long-term.
Is this something we should allow?
We've got a couple options. We can head off the issue entirely, right now, playing it safe, and say that we don't want to accept puzzles that touch on politics at all. Or... we can wait and see whether or not they even become problematic and divisive at all. The line of thought here might be that we don't have too many examples of this right now, meaning a preemptive decision isn't warranted. The counterargument would be that if we wait, it may become divisive, and before we know it we'll be stuck with a longer-lasting and harder to fix problem.
I personally lean towards just saying "please don't do it," and removing posts that do touch the political - not just party politics, but all politics - with a friendly comment and a gentle reminder. We've got a good thing going here, and I'd hate for politics to get in the way of... normal positive site interactions.
But this isn't the sort of thing I'm comfortable acting on unilaterally as a general rule without some form of meta agreement. What are your thoughts?