For people not wanting to see politics threads on the front page: I created a browser userscript for hiding politics threads on the front page back in November. All you need is a browser with userscript support and it should work. For example, Firefox + Greasemonkey works fine. For Chrome, I think you need some addon too. Anyway, you can get the script here. It should install by clicking the button that says 'Raw'. By default, it dims politics threads, but you can change it to fully hide them very easily (I made a 'relatively simple' configuration section, and that's the best that's possible with a userscript). A userscript is not exactly an ideal solution but hey, it works!
Uh, anyway. I agree that politics discussion needs some work here. It's by far the most hostile discussion environment on this site. I'm not sure I like the hiding idea myself because it's probably really going to kill all politics discussion, but other than that, it seems like a decent idea. I think it would be better to moderate politics discussions somehow better, but I'm not really sure how.
