I think "don't talk about downvoting" is one of our better policies, because it works: complaints about getting downvoted are reliably punished and often flagged off the site.
A thing the HN guidelines have to deal with that security policies definitely don't is minimalism. There's 1,000 additional guidelines I'd add if we could just have every guideline I want! "Don't dunk on programming languages in stories about unrelated programming languages"! "Don't write 2 line comments about how Google cancels every service it announces every time Google announces a new product"! "Don't correct other people's English usage"! If the HN guidelines were a security policy this would be a piece of cake.
A thing I think you'll probably notice is that a lot of serious, enforced rules on HN aren't even in the guidelines, because there isn't a minimal way to express them that won't cause more drama than it eliminates. We've got a sort of English common law thing going on here, where there's a jurisprudence you can only pick up by following the mods. I think it's actually working out pretty OK that way.
I would disagree about security policies not benefitting from a minimal approach. If they're exhaustive and tedious to read, then they won't be read or understood by the people who's decisions they're supposed to govern. Attempting to exhaustively enumerate the situations to which a policy could apply is a losing strategy. Making it as simple as possible for a person to know "what should I do here?" or "am I allowed to do this?" should be the ultimate goal.
A thing the HN guidelines have to deal with that security policies definitely don't is minimalism. There's 1,000 additional guidelines I'd add if we could just have every guideline I want! "Don't dunk on programming languages in stories about unrelated programming languages"! "Don't write 2 line comments about how Google cancels every service it announces every time Google announces a new product"! "Don't correct other people's English usage"! If the HN guidelines were a security policy this would be a piece of cake.
A thing I think you'll probably notice is that a lot of serious, enforced rules on HN aren't even in the guidelines, because there isn't a minimal way to express them that won't cause more drama than it eliminates. We've got a sort of English common law thing going on here, where there's a jurisprudence you can only pick up by following the mods. I think it's actually working out pretty OK that way.