Paul, please don't get me wrong, but I would like to politely point out
the exception; job posts from YC companies do get preferential
treatment in rankings on the front page. It's a known fact, and since
absolutely everything here is paid for by you and/or YC, no one has any
right or room to complain about YC funded companies getting some
additional exposure on their jobs posting. It's fair to consider the YC
company job postings as a small advertisement supporting the site.

Considering the crap that Patrick (patio11) and Google received about
mixing advertisements with results in (intentionaly?) confusing ways, it
might be better to put the YC company job ads in a different location
(top of the page, un-numbered and time limited to 24 hours or so) just
to make the intent and separation more clear. --It's just a thought.

Your handling of the AirBnB fiasco was stellar. You let the negative
story posts stay on the HN, and you allowed them to be up-voted to
infinity and beyond. The thing most people don't realize is "Why the
stories eventually started to decline in rankings, and why they declined
so quickly?" --The reason is people like me; those who got tired of
seeing the font page loaded with derogatory speculation and opinion
about AirBnB, and decided to 'flag' all of the submissions. Though I
have no proof, I'm certain I'm not the only one to be annoyed to the
point of flagging all the nonsense.

The most recent HN Troll happened this morning, namely the HTTP LoLCats
crap. It made it to the #2 spot on the front page (possibly #1 for a short
period). I was impressed that in the 17 comments, there were no "This
doesn't belong on HN" posts, so a lot of people were smart enough to
just silently hit the 'flag' link. I just finished checking, and the
HTTP LoLCats submission was nowhere to be seen in the first 360 results.
Had the HTTP LolCats submission still been on the front page after I got
a few hours of sleep, I may have logged out of HN and never returned.

It's fantastic to know you have voting-ring detection functioning to
some degree. It's a great way to prevent spam in all of it's various
forms. Without knowing the code you're really running (secret sauce and
all that), I can see one potential problem; Since the HN moderators are
from the ranks of the YC funded company founders, their participation on
HN is most likely weighted differently. In other words, the friends
amongst the YC founders not only constitute a voting-ring of sorts, but
their actions/votes on HN may have more weight. With human beings
wanting their friends to succeed, there is really no way around this
issue, technical or otherwise.

Though I have no special weight or privileges here on HN, I openly admit
to voting up and rooting for some of the YC funded companies that are
doing great things. A more direct way to say it is, I'm also part of the
"problem" of YC funded companies getting preferential treatment. Maybe
I'm a terrible person for wanting them to succeed, but then again, maybe
I'm only human, like rooting for good people doing great things, and
maybe there are plenty of other normal humans like me around here.

A lot of people, including Zed, only notice the very real
inconsistencies, but they don't understand the fundamental and technical
causes of the inconsistencies. You did address Zed's point, but you are
essentially defending a non-issue.

EDIT: Seeing this post get down-voted is disheartening. It tells me that
there is something definitely wrong, and the cause could be me, or HN, or both, but I don't know for certain.