It seems that there's enough of a divide between HN and YC. As I posted elsewhere, look at the common values expressed on HN, and you'll find plenty of YC startups that are diametric opposites of those values. In the many years I've participated in online forums, I still find HN to be the most well-moderated I've ever experienced.
In this case, I suppose we can satisfy that rule by taking [flagged] off the post and leaving the sensational title instead of editing it the way we normally would.
I'm one of the people who flagged it because it's mostly just boring partisan pissing contest. It doesn't pass the "intellectual curiosity" test.
I'm fairly relaxed about this sort of thing (e.g. some stories about Gaza and such should definitely on HN), but "firebrand says firebrand-y thing" ... yeah, that doesn't really fit. It's neither especially interesting or especially notable and we could have a story about this every week; perhaps even multiple.
What would be on-topic would be a an in-depth profile about this person, or something like that.
I don't know if I buy this. He did a death threat, he's the CEO of YC, that seems like something that belongs on HN, YC's community forum.
You might not be interested, that's totally fair, then don't upvote.
But flagging it so that people don't know the CEO of the community is expressing death threats? I feel like we should know. We shouldn't be learning about YC/HN from other sites and have it censored/flagged within the community.
Look, this Tan person seems unpleasant, but that doesn't mean it's on-topic here. Not everything related to YC is on-topic, and that there's a gap between HN and "YC-the-company" is exactly why I post here in the first place.
Dan unflagged it for the look of things, and I would have done the same, but I resent the accusation that I'm "censoring" things. I told you why I flagged it: it's just a silly off-topic "tit-for-tat of the day" type of thing that could quickly overrun the site if left unflagged because there's countless stories like that every day. Entire sites are dedicated almost exclusively to reporting this sort of thing, and if you're interested in that then follow sites that report on that type of thing.
HN is about "intellectual curiosity". It's not a "tech site" or "YC community forum" or "SF daily news site" or anything else.
It wasn't a a death threat but it would be safe to say that it expresses his sentiments. Being drunk is a partial excuse but it's a serious faux pas and he should own it rather than pretend it never happened.
I haven't lived in SF for years but the city government is legendary for it's ability to not serve its constituents (which obviously isn't unique).
Many YC-founded companies simply cannot afford a negative press cycle or let alone the press face-time outside of e.g. Techcrunch so it’s unfair to compare their “values” with Garry Tan’s established desire to be TK-style divisive and disruptive. So don’t assume YC Founders speak for the HN readership despite their outsized HN moderation influence (as evidenced by this post getting flagged).
If you or another reader has a Lobste.rs account, would you mind sending me an invite? I've been curious to join for a long time. My email is in my bio.
And the fact that this post got flagged inside of an hour speaks to how biased HN has become. Move to Lobsters and let YC Founders have their TK wannabe techbrosf.org
From a cursory glance, the quality of conversation appears to be nearly as high (or higher) than HN but that doesn't matter if most posts see less than 5-10 comments.
