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931 points sohzm | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.274s | source
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sebmellen ◴[] No.44461387[source]
This being on page 2 with 247 upvotes in the three hour time period this post has been up is surprising to me. I wouldn't be surprised if @dang is suppressing it (but I'd also be happy to hear that it's not being suppressed).

It's pretty spineless for the Pickle team to come out and pretend they mistakenly re-licensed GPL code. Hilarious.

> in initially building it we included code from a GPL-licensed project that we incorrectly attributed as Apache

How can you write a sentence like that in good faith?

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tomhow ◴[] No.44461505[source]
The first rule of HN moderation is that we moderate (i.e., intervene) less if a story reflects negatively on a YC company or YC itself.

This principle goes right back to pg days, and was the first thing he taught dang [1].

That said, it doesn't mean we avoid moderation at all and it doesn't mean the guidelines all go out the window.

Different factors influence the story's rank and visibility on the front page: upvotes, flags, the flamewar detector, and settings to turn these penalties on/off. I'm actively watching the thread to keep it on the front page, as per the rule.

That said, the guidelines ask us to avoid fulmination and assume good faith. Whilst it's fair enough to criticize and question a company when they do something like this, we can also be adult enough to look the evidence before us and recognize that this was most likely a dumb mistake that they've moved quickly to correct.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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csomar ◴[] No.44461801[source]
> The first rule of HN moderation is that we moderate (i.e., intervene) less if a story reflects negatively on a YC company or YC itself.

Unless you have transparency on flagging and mod actions, these are just your words. And as these events keep happening, your credibility erodes.

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1. tomhow ◴[] No.44462880[source]
This comment [1] from dang a couple of years ago touches on our reasons for not publishing a moderation log, and links to many more explanations over the years.

We're happy to be judged on the outcome, which, in this instance, is that the story has been on the front page for hours and everyone is able to have their say.

> And as these events keep happening, your credibility erodes.

YC has invested in thousands of companies by now and hundreds of new ones per year. That includes many founders who are young and inexperienced, and also plenty from diverse backgrounds, which, now that I've had time to dig into it, seems to apply here. Screwups are going to happen, as in every part of life; the law of large numbers guarantees it. What matters is what people do to make it right.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37137916