Two HN Announcements

Very promising announcements, Sam and Dan, although I have a few questions:

1) How does spinning out YC as its own service affect a) the job posting system and b) the YC class qualifiers in submission titles? / What does "editorial independence" mean in the context of his announcement? YC submissions had a lot of points, true, but I had thought that was attributed to the high YC user base.

2) Will users be able to vouch for [flagged] submissions in addition to [dead] submissions?

3) Due to the vouch system, will the use of banning in general be readdressed, since there is now a way to address false positives/negatives? Shadowbanning was implemented at Reddit as a last resort (that the new CEO wants to remove), and it isn't respectful to the user to not know if they are banned.

EDIT: Reordered to match dang's responses.

Doesn't affect (1) at all. As Sam mentioned, this is formalizing the de facto structure that's been in place a long time, so that announcement doesn't come with any changes to how HN works.

(2) Absolutely. Users can vouch for anything that's dead, including [flagged] and [dupe]. I see the notational confusion there; will ask Sam to update the post.

(3) Probably, but I'm not sure I agree with the line you're drawing from vouching to banning. Today's release massively lowers the cost an account of being banned. Instead of having your comments always stay [dead], they're now up for review by your fellow HNers; the community can decide what's good and bad. I'm not sure 'banned' is even the right word for it now— 'under moderation' would be closer.

The reason I say 'probably' above and not simply 'yes' is that there are a ton of issues to consider about it.