The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”

why is that the solution, and not that the police are allowed to break the rules?

if the car behind or in front of you crashes into you, a human on a bicycle, the damage is much greater than if it crashes into another car. If you assume the other driver is drunk, and stomps on the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal, in some ridiculous souped up sports car or truck, the human goes squish.

I think it does a fair job if you realize that the entire thing is semantics.

Every prompt is asking either one or both of these questions: "Is this a vehicle?" "Is it in the park?"

So you have to ask yourself what is a vehicle? Most people would not classify shoes as a vehicle. So why would attaching wheels to shoes make them vehicles? The definition of vehicle is rather vague, basically "something used to move people or goods, especially on land". Which skates kind of are. They use a machine, the wheel, to multiply work done.

Even though a matchbox car has all the appearances of something normally accepted as a vehicle, does the fact that it is incapable of transporting anything significant change that fact?

Then you get to "in the park". What is "in" the park as opposed to "out"? Yes, the grounds as defined by the property lines are definitely "in" the park. Someone driving a Civic through the grounds is definitely "in the park". Basically, do you count the airspace of the park and if so, where does it end? If something hovering 4 feet above the ground is in the park, then why isn't an airplane at 33,000 feet "in" in the park? Is it because we can't reasonably interact with it? If that's the case, do the boundaries of the park change depending on the height and reach of those in it? If no one is in the park, and you jump a Civic completely over the grounds, were you ever "in" the park?

Moderation is an attempt to define things like this. Sometimes more abstractly, sometimes way more directly. For instance, if you have a forum about sandwiches, you're going to have to have a rule about hot dogs. Whether or not they count.

You see it here all the time when someone asks "Why was this posted here?"

So if you have a rule that says "No slurs". That seems simple enough. But now you have to define what a slur is. If I call someone a "fucking idiot", is that slur or just an insult? What if I just said, "Americans, right?" Calling out someone's nationality shouldn't technically be a slur, but it's kind of the implication that turns it into one. Because I'm saying something about people from America, saying they all share a negative quality by virtue of where they are geographically from.

Do we just make a list of slurs? Do we try and account for tone? Where is the line between heated debate and a flamewar? Or even an engaged discussion and a heated debate. Even here, you can get rate limited for just interacting too much. Conversations killed because people were conversing too much.

But that's how they defined a vehicle, that's where they drew the lines of the park.

I grew up overseas, moved to America and I have felt absolutely liberated by the freedom I now have when it comes to following rules. I think it's productive that people can definitely choose to follow their own gut and conscience when it comes to their own lives.

I've seen much discussion of what a vehicle is, and some of what is "in" the park.

I've not yet seen (though not yet reading all 1114 extant comments) discussion of the goal and/or purpose of the rule.

Given this discussion is on Hacker News and my growing obsession with what makes this site tick (and occasionally sends it off the rails), contrast with HN's "real standard": "to engage one's intellectual curiosity" (http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html>).

HN's somewhat famously brief and loose guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>) augmented by dang's moderation comments (viewable by search: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>) provide much of that.

And, in fact, reading those search results just now turned up a ... interesting, now deleted ... response by dang on this thread which explains the "intended spirit" nature of HN moderation. I'm not going to quote the full item (respecting the deletion), but this bit seems to echo my sense:

[H]aving the set of first principles (the site guidelines) be organized around "intended spirit" rather than formal precision is the best bulwark I know.

In the cae of laws, the purpose or intent is often explicitly stated. In US tradition, the "whereas" clauses typically preceding the main body of legislation.

And for this game, the posted rule would benefit greatly by a clarification as to why it was enacted and what the rule is intended to accomplish. This would also clarify, even without specifically enumerating classes of vehicles or conveyances, and/or proximity to the park which specific cases might be permitted or excluded.