About the most interesting thing you can say about YC's "vested interest" is that they have a vested interest in having HN continue to be moderated at Dan's total discretion. That interest would change, obviously, if Dan was raptured. But discussing the possibility of Dan's rapturing is not interesting, curious, or productive: we're not talking about the failure modes of moderation when moderators are incapacitated, we're talking about moderatorial discretion.

The point of community stability is that it contributes to both their reputation and YC investment class applicant pools.

>That interest would change, obviously, if Dan was raptured. But discussing the possibility of Dan's rapturing is not interesting, curious, or productive: we're not talking about the failure modes of moderation when moderators are incapacitated, we're talking about moderatorial discretion.

Wild monologue, I'm not sure it serves the conversation to express your tangents and then criticize them as if they were mine.

>we're not talking about the failure modes of moderation when moderators are incapacitated, we're talking about moderatorial discretion.

I saw the conversation as one about the structure of moderation. Paying a mod that you meet with every week to sync up with is very different from someone making some small sub themselves and enaccting any rules that don't break the sitewide rules. Likewise, a mod has no vested interest in the site nor its policies.

That mod-admin relationship is special on reddit, in a mostly bad way since admins ignore many mod issues. Dang is more like a moderator and an admin rolled into one.