If the HN moderators wanted to do that after reviewing complaints against me, it's certainly within their rights.

You are missing the point... It does not matter if you feel comfortable or not. If you dont like something someone says, you dont have to attend. Instead of ruining a conference for people who dont care that someone uses normal language to describe things. Heck, I like speakers to be a bit raw, including people like Linus etc. So what if they are a jerk, I value them on their work, not their language. Of course I also have a personal limit of what i can classify as "acceptable", but if someone goes over that limit, i just ignore and move along. Why would i try to change the speaker or event to cater to me? Even if it was a slur or comment directed at me, it would be so much easier to just ignore it. I dont understand what gives these people the balls too try to publicly shame someone who have produced so much more value to society and tech then most of these guys combined.

>If the HN moderators wanted to do that after reviewing complaints against me, it's certainly within their rights.

What's legal/within one's rights and what's right is not the same thing.

To be also right, those HN moderators should also have thoroughly investigated (reviewed) those complaints, not just knee-jerk reacted to them (as seems to be the case here).

And even then, they should publicly state the reasons, not just leave an insinuation open.

And if this did had happened to you personally, with all the possible implications in your reputation, job etc, you'll be also demanding this of them too.

> after reviewing complaints against me

you'll have gotten better treatment than Mr. Crockford did, because clearly there wasn't much reviewing done by Nodevember. Otherwise, they could surely fill us in on what they reviewed?