doesn't surprise me at all. i'd expect both of those to have come up first before going 'nope, just ban it all, no halfway measures, fuck 'em.'
which is to say yeah, the policy
is
to run people off the site. there isn't any other actual answer. the theory would go "heavily political people are toxic, we don't want them, it'll be a less toxic community without them so we'll just ban all politics and kick them all out."
now this ends up grabbing
way
more people in the crossfire but the ends justify the means. until those ends result in losing so many people that even with desperate attempts like, say, another contest, you don't get remotely close to the traffic you once had because you ran people off and they don't care.
"Maybe it's a tentacle, molesting the planet itself. - Aschen Brodel.