Aside from the concern of breaking comment chains, a follow-up question for you would be "why post something that you might want to delete later / would not sta

Aside from the concern of breaking comment chains, a follow-up question for you would be "why post something that you might want to delete later / would not stand by enough to leave on there and be able to be accountable for later?" The ability to delete comments often becomes an easy cop out, especially in pseudoanonymous environments like HN, to say unmentionable things and evade consequences / accountability. I can see how they would take the simpler route of not allowing it as a user-facing option.