Some users would like to see two heated discussions about income inequality on the front page, but I can assure you that many others would not.
At the end of the day, if Paul Graham's opinion gets a chance at prime blog real estate, shouldn't people who disagree with him get the same chance?
It certainly is easy, but it's an uncharitable interpretation. We're moderating this thread less, not more, than we normally would.
One asymmetry here is that you're upset about a specific case, but we have to moderate HN in general. If you can come up with a viable set of general principles that would make HN significantly better, I'd like to know what they are. I personally have found it to be a hard problem.
A second asymmetry is that the cases where you dislike HN moderation stand out far more than the cases you agree with. (I mean "you" the reader, not you personally.) The latter simply blend into the status quo. Such perceptions are prone to bias, which is one reason it's easy to be uncharitable.
> If you can come up with a viable set of general principles
> that would make HN significantly better, I'd like to know
> what they are. I personally have found it to be a hard
> problem.
Yeah, but how many? We know how many people upvote a submission. We can't see how many people flag it. And flags seem to carry far more weight than upvotes, so we have a situation where a dissident minority squashes the will of the majority and censors discussion.
The other issue of course is how crowded conversations get and how difficult it is for newcomers to join. If a submission has 300+ comments, good luck having your voice heard. Whereas "response" submissions give voice to second and third wave commenters who don't have the luxury of refreshing HN every 10 minutes to catch conversations that are on the upswing.