There are tradeoffs here. Of course we allow users to delete their comments, but once a comment has replies, deleting it deprives the replies of their context, which is not fair to the users who replied. We're trying to be fair to everybody, as well as to the community as a whole.

If you delete-edit, you're doing an end run around that, which is not cool, and doing it on a whole bunch of posts is, as I said, vandalism, and something we'd ban an account for.

While I have you: can you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments, especially on inflammatory topics like political or ideological ones? It's not what HN is for, and it really damages what it is for. We're trying for curious conversation here, not smiting enemies.

To end on something positive, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26706409 is a comment you posted that manages to get that right, even though it's on a political/ideological topic. It gives substantive information and omits swipes—that's not easy, but it is simple—and it's the level conversations have to stay at if this place is not to destroy itself.