Perfect consistency is too stringent a standard for HN moderation, because we can't see everything that gets posted here and it would drive one mad to try. When you do see something we've missed, we'd appreciate your telling us so we can fix it. The way to do that is to email hn@ycombinator.com because (in a nice bit of circularity) if you post it here we might not see it.

As for whether the rule itself is too strict, I really don't think so. It's rooted in long experience of what keeps this place relatively substantive, and like a number of HN's rules goes deeper and has subtler side effects than one would suppose. The principle of remaining neutral with respect to content, presenting it in a way that invites readers to make up their own minds, serves HN well. Underlying that are the principles that the reader is smart enough to do so, that it's good to ask the reader to work a little, and an emphasis on the content itself rather than the submitter.

That's not to say we never make exceptions, but the OP is a good example of where we wouldn't, hence my comment.

It might seem so, but we don't know how many similar things were fixed by moderators. Perhaps the more egregious offenses that you saw were simply overlooked?

In any case, dang was more than reasonable in his explanation and even included OP's original title and link for those who were curious. It seems like a good teaching opportunity.

If you see them you can report them using the flag link, or maybe send an email to the mods.

Haha, yes.

It's a bit like Wikipedia or Stackoverflow. More and more "rules" get set up independent of the community, but "for the greater good".