Thanks for your reply. I wanted to respond sooner (while the thread had a little life left), but was traveling.

In any case, I think a major issue is the continued attribution without notice to the submitter or publicly on the actual submission itself. You clearly appreciate this because, as you've indicated, you generally try to note when you've made changes, however not all moderators do because they are not "public". It seems a simple solution would be to have the system automatically generate a public change note on the submission when any mod makes a change. The actual mod can certainly be anonymous if that's desirable for some reason. An additional automated email to the submitter would be good as well.

Not only is this a courtesy to the submitter, but it improves the experience for those who may be actively involved in discussions on the thread. And, frankly, it is simply the right thing to do where the principle of proper attribution is concerned, so it is worth ensuring the consistency that automation would provide.

The idea that people are submitting a "slot" seems contradictory to me. Does HN want topics or actual content? The UI and submission process (allowing URLs, asking for title retention, etc.) are also inconsistent with this notion of slots. Most importantly, I think most people associate attribution with actual content versus a "slot".

My apologies for not using the email address to present the question that is the subject of this submission. I was sincerely unaware. However (and not to qualify that apology), I will separately add that a lack of consistency from HN mods invites confusion and guideline violations (inadvertent or otherwise). That is, given that there is an acknowledged value in HN publicly notifying the submitter/community when a moderation action has been taken, then on the occasions when it fails to do so it leaves users open to confusion and frustration. Hence, more questions will be asked and, statistically, some of these will--inadvertently or otherwise--not be via email, thus contributing to an increase in the almost comically hated meta-noise.

This is actually consistent with UI design. Just as any good UI provides consistent feedback and teaches the user in order to prevent errors and frustration, HN can teach consistency by demonstrating it and by answering questions before they are even asked via providing reliable feedback.

Speaking of "meta", it seems worthwhile to have some forum for public discussion of HN operation/moderation, which can obviously be apart from standard content that winds up on the frontpage. Because, as this thread alone indicates, there is obviously a great deal of interest on the topic, and that interest is on both sides. That is, ironically enough, those who seem to most hate "meta" also become vocal about their hatred for it, thus contributing to it themselves. So, they really do want to talk about it.

Most importantly, however, those folks who advocate maintaining the status quo without further discussion have plenty of means for sinking content, including flagging and simply ignoring/not upvoting. And, of course, they are free to use comments to openly bash that with which they disagree. Since they are supporting the status-quo, their comments are encouraged and welcomed.

Yet, the only means by which users can offer suggestions or pose questions of concern is privately via email. There can be no discussion among the community as a whole without bringing out the anti-meta zealots and being modded/flagged into oblivion. If HN is OK with its approach because it believes it to be the best way to ensure quality, then OK. What else can we say? But, it opens itself to a bit of a confirmation bias problem, wherein only those who agree with the status quo are heard at significant volume.

It also seems that the number of factors that contribute to "quality" creates an unnaturally supressive effect on content and appears to lead to a bit of over-modding (or an overly robust negative toolset). How is it that a story can have more interest than any other story and, at the same time, be flagged or modded into obscurity? This effectively says that, while there is nothing more interesting than this submission to the community as a whole, there are nonetheless enough people who dislike it (if even for technicalities) to kill it, thus stifling discussion for others. By definition, it will then be replaced with less compelling content. I hear you that upvoting alone may not be sufficient to surface content. But, it does seem to be a serious bikeshedding problem when a submission that rockets to the top spot and lingers for a few hours is suddenly sunk on a "technicality". The net effect is that a minority of HN killed a community-relevant story that garnered much interest. Is that result in the best interest of the HN community? Or has some purism crept in?

At the end of the day, HN can do what it wants and part of the problem may be that its appearance is democratic, when it actually is not. I mean this with regard to both how it is operated and how content is surfaced. So, that may lead to disappointment for a number of users, which I believe we are seeing on this thread.

Thanks for reading and, again, for your reply.