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I added more detail to that paragraph to make these things clear.

Yes, I'll be working on Arc again. (I've been working in Arc regularly, since HN is written in it, but I haven't been able to spend much time thinking about the core language for the last 5 years or so.)

The real motivation for pending comments, incidentally, was simply that I found, as a user, that I didn't like reading comment threads as much as I used to. HN was an instance of me following the advice I often give founders: to build something you yourself want.

What you say about YC being a good target for a symbolic victory is very insightful though. That is a real conundrum. I think it explains why any company over a certain size tends to express itself pretty blandly.

That seems a mistaken assumption. The presence of existing comments often causes me to refrain from posting comments. Often I've been about to reply to something, then notice someone else has already said substantially the same thing, and as a result don't.

And this is not a contrived example. As I said when I first launched pending comments, if someone says something important in a nasty way, it may well turn out to be safe not to endorse it, because someone else will probably show up and make the same point without nastiness.

Plus if HN gets more civil, it may encourage people to comment who might not have before. I know from my own experience that incivility has decreased the number of comments I make. I often find myself about to say something, then decide I have work to do and don't have time to spend the afternoon fighting, and so don't say it.

Only experience can tell us whether one or both of these factors will increase the number of comments, but we can't assume that pending comments can only reduce discussion.

We're hoping that this feature will make the site more hospitable to women. That wasn't the only reason for doing it, because users get stupid and/or nasty about lots of topics (or any topic, if they happen to start insulting one another), but certainly some of the most cringe-worthy threads we've cringed over have involved female programmers. So it would be hard to imagine a version of "working" for which pending comments working would not thereby make HN more welcoming to women.