Goodbye this place has been corrupted
Anyway, the discussion looks nasty.
[Edit: look note at the bottom] The original title was "Urgent: Sign the petition now: Thousands of startups and hundreds of thousands", now is "Urgent: Sign the petition now". I dislike the original and the new title. I'd prefer "Petition: Thousands of startups and hundreds of thousands of startup jobs are at risk" that is better with the dry stile here.
> Goodbye this place has been corrupted
It's strange because the common accusation is that the mods of HN highlight the good posts about YC and hide the post that badmouth YC. But this is the reverse case, it would be expected that they make this post sticky at the #1 of the front page instead of hiding it. My guess is that the mods are trying to have editorial independence and respect the flags of the users and don't give special preference to YC posts.
Edit: It also was posted a few minutes before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35113681 and that is still [flagged] [dead]. Perhaps this story never got [dead] and only [flagged], and the original title was "YC Is Asking for a Bailout". Anyway, this does not change my opinion on the subject.
Many users have the ability to flag, it takes more than one flag to flag a post but not much more than one flag.
Back in 2010 the HN community leaned libertopian but it has a large Jacobin contingent and that post could have gotten a few flags from people who think it is self-serving claptrap.
An admin changed the title to the article's title, in keeping with the site guidelines. Other than that, I'm not aware of any mod actions affecting the post.
Let the story live, just be transparent and pin a comment at the top saying it is staying up because it materially affects the company that runs this site. The community is able to understand. Frame it as intentionally paying for an otherwise free service because you want it to continue to exist. Make the front page 1 story longer while it's up if it's about the sanctity of the front page. This community is reminded it's an arm of YC because of how jarring it is every time there's a job posting on the front page and we can't comment on it.
You've done such a great job stewarding this community, time to cash in on the good will you've banked, for our benefactors.
Whatever you decide I'll respect your decision, but I felt another perspective might help.
The post we're talking about, which users flagged, was a YC blog post asking people to sign a petition. Petitions aren't particularly on topic for HN to begin with. We occasionally override the community verdict if we feel like a story is particularly interesting and the override is a 'teachable moment' about the kind of culture we want on HN. That wasn't the case here, and if we had tried to override the community to favor a YC company post on a hot and controversial topic that many people were angry about, we would have been skinned alive.
Two moderation skills that help a lot are (1) not overusing power, and (2) not stepping in front of fast-moving trains. One learns these things the hard way and I don't want to revisit the lesson!
Put another way: "We are asking for a VC bailout."
Don't beat around the bush. You are asking for these depositors to be bailed out. "Depositors" is a weaselly way to say "companies that my friends and I have major equity positions in."
If these are great businesses, they'll find financing. Current equity holders will suffer a loss. That's how it's supposed to work. Eat your lumps and don't go begging for a bailout for your foolish risk taking and lack of due diligence.
Understandably you're trying to maximize the value of the equity that you and your friends own. But it's a bad look to pretend this is about workers paying their mortgages. If that's what you cared about you'd be signing a petition for mortgage forbearance or some other direct-to-worker bailout.
Stop lying. It's transparent and pathetic.