Edit: can't edit that post :(
I'm surprised. Those comments must be wrong. We respond to this at hn@ycombinator.com all the time.
HN doesn't delete accounts. We do delete specific posts that people are worried about getting in trouble from. The reason is because deleting an account and all its comments guts the threads that account participated in, which is unfair to the other commenters in the discussion. The threads are community property and we have a responsibility to preserve them. PG wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226.
Our approach tries to balance that concern with individual needs. Sometimes people post things they later regret, e.g. personal or employer info. In such cases we're happy to help by redacting or deleting the comment. But we do it on a case-by-case basis. That way people can get their specific concerns taken care of, but the community history remains largely intact.
We do intend to implement account renaming, which should resolve most remaining concerns. But it isn't done yet.
Like I said earlier, I wanted to delete my account just to remove this as a time sink, but it's a bit more than that. The minor reprimand for name calling was a minor confirmation of it, but one of the things I've seen of late is that many posts are incredibly critical of things that often don't deserve it. For example, a few of my posts about personal experiences with mental health are met with strong, undeserved, and almost angry criticisms towards my experiences. It feels overkill, and many times it validates the hostility that those with mental health issues have when discussing these issues. HN seems to be one of harshest sites I've seen on this subject. I mention the reprimanding, since that's a "hard insult", rather than the "soft insults" I've seen during mental health discussions. They both carry a similar weight, but one (for understandable reasons) sounds sharper, so is easier to handle and parse from someone who's dropping into the discussion. Maybe what I've seen is just a few bad eggs, but others have shared similar experiences - thought that may just be the converse of the bad eggs.
Is there anything that can be done to help out here? I'm not calling for any individual solution and by no means asking for censorship of any form, but it's something that's been on my mind recently, since unnecessary hyper-critcal responses feel just as damaging to a community as direct insults are. It's a stupidly difficult problem, but possibly worth mentioning. I'm sure you guys have discussed this before, though.
(Sorry for the mild rant, and this probably isn't the best place to discuss this, so please feel free to delete this and I can shoot an email instead.)
I've seen some stupid moderation policies in my day, and this is definitely up there.