What the other replies are not quite getting is that there can be other kinds of moderator actions that aren't acting on posts that are offtopic or offensive, b

What the other replies are not quite getting is that there can be other kinds of moderator actions that aren't acting on posts that are offtopic or offensive, but that do not meet the bar for the forum in question — are they considered out of scope with this ruling? As an example, suppose on a HN thread about the Coq theorem prover, someone starts a discussion about the name, and it's highly upvoted but the moderators downrank that post manually to stimulate more productive discussions. Is this considered curation, and can this be no longer done given this ruling? It seems to me that this is indeed the case, but in case I'm mistaken I'd love to know.