"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Or, framing it in another light, maybe they want to support something they have tried and believe in.

You know you're on ycombinator, right? It seems perfectly natural to want to commercialize something people want.

Sure maybe today’s HN. Not the one I joined 12 years ago. When there were actual hackers.

HN was Startup News before it was Hacker News. It has always had a strong entrepreneurial orientation.

Cunt.

There sure has been a shift though. You'd be just the guy to shed some light on these changes.

For example, when did flagged comments become unreadable, rather than simply folded up by default? I'd like to see the logic on that one, if any was given at all.

Was there an algorithm change that lets popular stories under active discussion on touchy subjects get disappeared with a few flags, or was that here from the start too?

Are there any logs you can point me to that would reveal the scale of removed stories over time?

It's hard to know what specifically you're referring to, but to the extent that I understand your questions, the answer is that things have worked that way for many years, certainly before I started moderating in 2012.

There was no need to post all those sibling comments; I didn't reply sooner because I simply hadn't seen this yet. That's one reason why the site guidelines ask you to email [email protected] instead of posting like this in the threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If this is not the appropriate channel to ask these questions, could you :do your job: and point me to it?

Dang do these questions bother you for some reason? If the answers aren't damning why avoid answering?

Not rhetorical questions above. Come on bud, make some kind of answer, or point me to where the answers are.