So what happened?

He had already got 300+ up-votes the first time around and was the clear runoff "winner", so they added a low-key second poll hoping that some of the later entrants could cut it down to size. People got wind of this blatant rule-bending and gave Pinboard twice the votes he got the first time. So Kevin reluctantly called Maciej, didn't like the sound of his voice, and decided to cut him out regardless, vaguely implying that the voting process had been somehow compromised by a tweet.

He tried to stack the deck by asking his 30,000 twitter followers to vote for him. He got caught. YC decided to be generous and interview him rather than disqualifying him completely. After the interview, YC decided not to invest in his company.

Just to be clear, your opinion is that Maciej deliberately and knowingly cheated?

My opinion is that if you use performance-enhancing drugs, you lose Olympic medals, even if it only happened because you accidentally took the wrong cold medicine while in a foreign country (see Silken Laumann). Maciej should have known that soliciting votes via twitter was against the rules; whether he did know is irrelevant to whether he should be excluded.

You didn't actually answer my question.

When you use a lot of phrases like: "Maciej cheated", "Maciej tried to game the system", "He tried to stack the deck", you don't make it sound like you think he accidentally took cold medicine - you're directly attributing malice to him.

He deliberately took a drug which he knew would improve his athletic performance. He may or may not have known that it was on the banned drugs list.

In that case, I'd recommend switching to phrases like: "Maciej may or may not have cheated", "Maciej may or may not have tried to game the system", "He may or may not have tried to stack the deck" and modifying the rest of the tone of your comments appropriately. tptacek, who knows Maciej personally, seems confident that he did not.

In the comments on the new guideline about gratuitous negativity, the intent seems to be "use the most charitable interpretation". Accusing someone of being dishonest falls outside that.

Nitpicking here: I don't think Silken Laumann lost any Olympic medals, only Pan Am medals if I remember correctly. Not that it makes any difference whatsoever to your point.

Huh, you're quite right. I guess I mentally conflated "Olympic athlete" and "lost medals" into "lost Olympic medals".