On the contrary, the things mods do—including downweighting top subthreads when they break the guidelines or aren't in the intended spirit of the site—are vital to why HN functions as well as it does (not that it functions particularly well; just that it could and would be worse). In fact, that process of downweighting top subthreads is probably the biggest thing we've ever figured out to improve thread quality, at least in recent years.

* Btw, if there were a way to have the community and software alone do what mods do, and thus eliminate the need for mods, that would be a day of great rejoicing on our part.

Don’t do that and tell me I’ve deprived people of context. You've already taken away from otherwise valid discussion about development with an industry and why this sentiment has proliferated by pushing my post to the bottom.

I could have also simply replaced the sentence with, "I don't like it when people repeat that Safari is the new IE," but HN doesn't have a recorded policy of restoring posts from downweighing.

If this is the only offending sentence, it seems like pretty shallow moderation to me.

“Edit out swipes” is a part of HN guidelines. I removed the post because clearly moderation found it fulminating, I agree it was, and now you seem to think you own my words.

If you have a problem with edits after silent moderation and believe this to be abuse, which contradicts current guidelines, just update the guidelines to include such a statement.

Perhaps it's unclear but the guideline there is about taking that stuff out before you post. The whole set of subsequent problems just goes away entirely if you do that which should be straightforward given there's agreement on the root cause - the posting of yelly comments.

The "edit out swipes" guideline is intended more along the lines of "please edit out any guideline-breaking swipey bits from your comment, while leaving the substantive point intact."