When should we remove a question from the Hot Network Question list?

Question

As you might have read in the recent global meta announcement, moderators now have the option to manually remove a question from the Hot Network Questions list.

Should Politics Stack Exchange make use of this option, and if yes in what case?

For reference, here a few questions which became Hot Network Question in the past weeks:

• What will be the benefits of Brexit? [on hold]
• Can somebody explain Brexit in a few child-proof sentences?
• Why does John Bercow say “unlock” after reading out the results of a vote?
• Who must act to prevent Brexit on March 29th?
• Why should universal income be universal?
• Is there an Impartial Brexit Deal comparison site?
• Freedom of speech and where it applies
• Why did the EU agree to delay the Brexit deadline?
• Can the Supreme Court overturn an impeachment?
• What is the evidence for the "tyranny of the majority problem" in a direct democracy context?
• Instead of a Universal Basic Income program, why not implement a "Universal Basic Needs" program?
• Shouldn’t conservatives embrace universal basic income?

Answer 1

Very rarely, when absolutely necessary to prevent harm to the site or the community.

I cannot in good faith vote up Jeff Lambert's answer, because I do not want to handcuff the moderators if something outrageous and unusual happens. But, looking through the main-site questions linked in this meta question, I do not see a problem with the way HNQ is currently working. All of those questions look exemplary to me. So far as I can tell, HNQ has, perhaps surprisingly, not caused much actual controversy or the "bad HNQ upvotes" problem seen on other sites, and in fact has showcased some of our finest work to the rest of the network. We should continue writing good questions and answers, and generally let HNQ do its job.

At the same time, I am inclined to trust the site's moderators to use reasonable judgment in exercising their powers. If some bizarre and improbable scenario which I cannot foresee happens, I would prefer that the moderators act immediately to protect the site, with whatever measures are most suitable. I do not seriously anticipate this happening, but I also do not seriously anticipate the moderators abusing their discretion should something happen.

Answer 2

Never.

As a community driven site, this is a hard question. Questions are only supposed to make it on the HNQ list once it has received sufficient votes within a certain time span, and explicitly removing questions from the HNQ after they get on it I think goes against the community. This could exacerbate feelings that moderators are being biased against [insert group of people].

If we're worried that off-topic (but popular) questions make it on to the list, then we should close those questions. As Philipp points out in a comment, closing questions already removes them from the HNQ list. Similarly, if popular but badly worded titles make it on the list, the appropriate response should be to edit the question to make the title more appropriate since the list of questions is displayed network wide.

Quoting from the meta post:

In general, we recommend that you exclude questions that attract negative attention to your sites, that is, questions that are controversial, start large amounts of debate or arguments or even edit wars.

I personally don't feel this is applicable on this site, if a question gets out of hand in the comments then flags will be raised and moderators can lock the post and nuke the comments. I don't feel as some do that Politics.SE should shy away from topics that are controversial (so long as the questions are still at the very least on their face objectively answerable), since so many things in politics these days seem to be controversial. We would just be painting ourselves into an ever smaller box on topics the community as a whole allows.

There is some concern, especially on the subject of politics, that some questions may be upsetting to some users (for instance: this recently deleted meta question, seen here on archive.org for those without access). I don't think there's much we can do about this, given that a question is asked in good faith and isn't being intentionally harmful in how it is constructed. To me it doesn't make much sense to implement a rule where any question about, say, "Communism" or "the Vietnam War" is intentionally excluded from the list of hot questions.

In summary: trust in the community itself and the HNQ algorithm as it is implemented at any given time, and rather than delete questions from the list modify borderline cases in order to make sure Politics.SE isn't intentionally triggering people when they're trying to solve programming problems.

Answer 3

It might make sense when the question is put on hold (as is currently the case for the two big Brexit questions) or, as a pre-emptive measure, very likely to be put on hold.