It's interesting to see how HN has grown so far beyond these initial goals. I'm sure it's still useful to YC for their purposes, but it's also an important part

It's interesting to see how HN has grown so far beyond these initial goals. I'm sure it's still useful to YC for their purposes, but it's also an important part of the internet in its own right. Despite growing massively in scope, the moderators do a remarkably good job of running the site true to its potential, rather than optimizing it to service the YC startup pipeline. No doubt this makes it more useful for YC's purposes, too, but I imagine that the cost/reward ratio is exponentially skewed against YC's favor (i.e. the bigger this community becomes, it provides diminishing returns to YC but requires ever more moderation effort to keep in order). The fact that we can be openly critical of YC or YC-funded companies here, and our open criticisms circulated throughout the community of people who might become YC founders or customers of their companies, says a lot about the integrity of the moderation. It's not perfect, but the mods strike a great balance and are receptive to feedback. Anyway, thanks to dang, scb, et al for keeping this community a good place to be.