If Yankees and Red Sox fans regularly got into shouting matches on the ESPN software development mailing lists, I expect they'd be told to knock it off, and I wouldn't see that as a contradiction of the idea that sports is important.
If politics is consequential, then one of the worst ways to handle it is have people digging themselves into entrenched extreme positions just to "win" the ideological war against their dehumanized imaginary enemy. Better to shut them up so at least they have a chance to engage their brain in peace without the endless emotional need to fight for whatever unreasonable nonsense somebody goaded them into getting angry about.
The reason to avoid political discussions is that they're often as toxic as the worst sports arguments, not that the underlying topics don't matter. No matter how important the underlying issue is, having my coworkers call each other nasty names won't resolve it.
this, I’ve worked at places where we could talk politics and have disagreements and it’s totally fine. It’s when those discussions become toxic it’s an issue and management would rather avoid those hard conversations all together. Having said that, I have also worked places where it’s been banned. I also remember certain mailing lists just as toxic for non-political (maybe political in the engineering world) reasons. I think it all comes down to how you foster discussions about discourse.
You're right. Then again ESPN doesn't bend over backwards to constantly bombard viewers with content that will sow division and hate between franchises so I'd imagine it's less likely to be a recurring issue.
