To see why, read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The purpose of HN to gratify intellectual curiosity. I'm impressed that a number of users responded to this post in that spirit, but that's unusual. In general, internet rage is a self-licking ice cream cone, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16194750 is far more typical.
This is obviously a controversial topic. You say you're impressed with how people have responded - why not let "the market" sort itself out? Mike is a very influential figure in SV, and it might be good for the community as a whole to air their grievances and try and work out how they themselves feel about the issue, and broader implications about the world of VC and how it interplays with companies, founders and employees. I worry that by moderating this HN is artificially contributing to the echo chamber here; flagging this post doesn't remove the Facebook posts and Tweets proclaiming the evils of VC without room for discussion.
When the topic of such posts probably have a > 0 percent stake in YC companies, such actions from mods is only to be expected to some degree.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...
Linking to posts where you say "less not more" is much different then say, getting the flag/weighting factor data on every post, and running a classifier that segments out YC affiliated ones from ones that are not, and there being a statistical representation of your assertion.
But like I've said to some degree before, your forum, your rules :)
There's a deeper issue too. We don't think about HN in terms of furthering YC's immediate interests. Nothing could be dumber, because the community would notice immediately—in Monty Python's classic phrase, "God would see through a cheap ploy like that". We just think about how to make HN more interesting. That's how to make it more valuable—including its hard business value. I wrote about this here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019486
Of course we use 'interesting' in a somewhat specialized way, and no community of this size can ever be entirely pleased, as people differ in what interests them. But if we moderate a post like the OP, it isn't because of an opinion about venture capital or China or workers or whatever. It's because of what counts as interesting on HN, and what we know from experience adds or detracts from it.
Given the right framing, I think it's possible to turn "outrage" pieces into thoughtful discussion pieces and examine the intricacies of why individuals may have certain opinions or behave certain ways. Facebook and Twitter aren't great mediums; Twitter is practically an outrage-manufacturing hot-take machine and Facebook is restrictive in content distribution. I guess part of me just wonders if by silencing outrage we're actually helping it proliferate in other mediums - that emotional energy has to dissipate somewhere.
Edit: Saw your edit with link to guidelines afterwards. I understand completely. Given this is a hot-button topic I guess I was supposing this might be a good opportunity to let people air out concerns, but I also understand the need to be consistent in enforcement. Cheers!
By the way, why do I get less than half the karma points my contributions get? I am a long time quality contributor. Why am I getting penalized?
Not all votes on submissions count towards karma because of HN's anti-gaming software, which has measures to prevent karma-building rings and whatnot. You're not treated differently from any other user.