If this had been "YC is giving away money! Pick someone you think YC should give $20k to!" then I would absolutely have voted for Pinboard. And I would have submitted Tarsnap, too.

But they were looking for more than that, so I voted based on the question they asked -- who should they fund, not simply who should they give money to.

And yet I bet you voted with the expectation that winners would be chosen based on the criteria laid out in the original ApplyHN post.

You're right, I thought that Dan would make the final call rather than Kevin.

But I never thought that votes alone would decide anything; the original post explicitly ruled out that possibility.

If it's unsurprising that YC picks based on their gut and not on any hard criteria... it shouldn't be. Surprise, almost all white dudes again!

This entire ordeal has shown us the thin skin of VCs and VC culture.

If HN/YC wanted to do the right thing, they should have taken some time to assess removing Pinboard BEFORE voting ended. Instead, what they did was game their own system: They likely sensed Pinboard could be trouble from the beginning, but hoped they would not win. They attempted to achieve that result by letting the voting play out, and THEN disqualified Pinboard when the voting results were not in their favor.

Kevin's explanation was the one that was basically "I didn't like the cut of his jib", right? That Maciej is Not Our Sort, Dear?