Hm, I didn't bucket flag-brigading into the astroturfing bucket (specifically because they're quite different - one suppresses speech whereas the other purports to be grassroots speech). Your point is well taken, but going forward dang, there's value in adding the "or similar manipulation" qualifier to the current iteration of guidelines:

> Please don't make insinuations about astroturfing. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried, email us and we'll look at the data.

Hopefully this comment is viewed as both the acknowledgement as well as the constructive feedback it's intended to be.

For sure it's constructive. I'll see about expanding the wording.

Edit: ok, done. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html