

Ask HN: What happened to the Gradberry thread? - thebiglebrewski

Was it killed by HN mods because it&#x27;s a YCombinator company?
======
dang
HN mods don't kill stories because they're about YC companies. On the
contrary, when bad stories about YC startups appear, we either don't penalize
them at all, or at least not as much as we otherwise would. It's literally the
first thing PG emphasized when showing me how he moderated HN.

People are understandably suspicious about this, and we don't expect suspicion
to go away just because we say so. But this way we can answer in good
conscience.

~~~
thebiglebrewski
That's really good to hear. Honestly, I trust you guys and the mods for the
most part. But I just got a bit weirded out and wanted some clarification.
Thanks for the info!

~~~
dang
You're welcome. Any time. You'll more reliably get a response if you send your
questions to hn@ycombinator.com, though. We don't always see these.

------
JoshTriplett
As the person who _posted_ the Gradberry thread, I don't think it was buried
or otherwise penalized by HN moderators. I wouldn't be surprised if a few
people flagged it, but _shrug_ , stuff happens.

See [http://hnrankings.info/9332418/](http://hnrankings.info/9332418/) ;
there's only one big drop there, and it occurred in the morning when people
would start posting a lot of other stories that would push it down. And even
then, it stayed on the front page for many hours; a flagged or moderated story
would drop off _much_ faster.

Not everything is a conspiracy; assume good faith.

On the other hand, I'm curious why someone edited the title of the thread.
When I originally posted it, I wrote "Gradberry (YC W15)" in the title, but
someone edited that out. Since this wasn't a link to an article, there was no
original title to match there. What gives?

~~~
dang
The "YC XYY" tags are for launches and major third-party articles. We take
them out of other titles, especially blog posts and things posted by the
startups themselves.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Why? Seems like it'd be fine for articles about YC startups to always mention
that they're YC startups and what batch they were in.

~~~
dang
That's the way it's always been. Perhaps so it doesn't get over-used? I never
asked pg about it.

------
gus_massa
It's still alive
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332418)

~~~
thebiglebrewski
Ah. Weird that I don't see it on hckrnews or on the front page anywhere...

