A well-known user asked a question along the lines of "Is the reason Quillette hasn't been nuked from HN because Paul Graham likes it? I hope not." I had a resp

A well-known user asked a question along the lines of "Is the reason Quillette hasn't been nuked from HN because Paul Graham likes it? I hope not." I had a response typed up for him, but he deleted his question. Here's my response, because I feel like distrust of moderation by prominent members is something that should be prevented if at all possible: I don't believe so: the current moderation of news.YC make their own decisions (not just saying 'dang solely because I'm not sure if 'sctb is actively partaking in moderation, just doing technical work now for the site, or none of the above), and 'pg (as far as I'm aware) doesn't really interact with the site in any capacity at this point. No need to accuse the site's moderation of doing something bad for Graham's sake: he's a/they're very sensible and nice person/people, and very good at his/their jobs, at that. I do think there was a valid case for not punishing the site too hard at first: seeing what kind of discussion it generates over a statistically-relevant amount of articles is useful for figuring out how to handle these cases going into the future, and of course on the principle that blacklisting domains should be a last-resort option. I think 'dang has elaborated a bit on his reasoning already, and there's no reason to take him at anything but face value. However, I think that time has passed somewhat, and as you can see later, 'dang is re-evaluating it now, so there's no need to worry. The site's in good hands.