[Responding to myself since I can't respond to the the flagged and dead original. You can click on your username and turn on "Show Dead" to view it.] I have wi

[Responding to myself since I can't respond to the the flagged and dead original. You can click on your username and turn on "Show Dead" to view it.] I have witnessed HN darlings get away with far, far worse ad-hominem vulgarity with nary a peep from the moderators Likely, but enforcement is always going to be "spotty", so it's almost impossible to distinguish bias from bad luck in any particular case. And perhaps they are "darlings" because they interact politely with the moderators? For history's sake, let's link the original post which dang replied to and subsequently killed. I don't know if it is intentional, but I think you are conflating different issues. Dan marked the thread off topic and explained why. Subsequently, another comment in the thread was killed by user flags. It is unlikely that Dan killed it himself. There was zero rule breaking in that one, just thoughtcrimes Arguably, although the counter-argument that Dan presents is that "attractive nuisances" are against the rules. He explains his reasoning (which I agree with) in a more recent response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12163939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12163939. The goal of moderation is not ensuring technical compliance with arbitrary rules, rather then goal is "protecting civil, substantive discussion". Like the common (and often truncated) quote that "democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms", the standard against which HN should be judged is not whether the moderation is perfect, but how it compares to the alternatives. Based on the current state of HN relative to other internet discussion sites, I'd claim that the moderation seems to be working pretty well. Where do you think is doing a better job? Separately, are "clevernickname" and "FD3SA" both your accounts? The transition it the thread from one account to the other seems odd to explain otherwise. If so, the "zero rule breaking in that one" seems like an odd claim, akin to the "Freemen on the Land" claims of immunity from the the courts based on being "Incorrectly Identified". See page 75 here: https://thelastbastille.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/meads-v-meads-2012-abqb-571-organized-pseudolegal-commercial-argument-opca-freeman-on-the-land-decision.pdf https://thelastbastille.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/meads-v-... If HN is about entrepreneurship and technological progress, why do they ruthlessly suppress established scientific consensus? I know this must feel like a well framed question, but it's really not. Why should we assume "HN is about entrepreneurship and technological progress" any more than assuming "the moon is made of blue cheese"? Who exactly is the "they" that is suppressing scientific consensus, and if this was the goal why choose such a round-about way to do so? For that matter, what does "consensus" have to do with science? And here's my hypothesis: because it does not fit the current political zeitgeist. A scientific hypothesis should make a falsifiable prediction. Is this the sense in which you are using the term? If so, what predictions does your hypothesis make that are different from a plausible "null hypothesis" like "the moderators are trying their best to keep HN as a place where substantive discussion is possible"? How would we go about testing these predictions?