To be clear we're talking about the state of the world around two years ago. I'm not a bottleneck for this anymore. :)
Also, this is a bit of an uncharitable read. The calculus at the time wasn't about trust per se, and more about the fact that the relationship between quality of blog content and the content's reach is nonlinear. That means it's worth taking the time to get it right, even if the people best suited to make that happen aren't super available, because the difference between getting on the front page of HN vs not is multiple orders of magnitude. (But I think we get the best of both worlds now.)
Also, this is a bit of an uncharitable read. The calculus at the time wasn't about trust per se, and more about the fact that the relationship between quality of blog content and the content's reach is nonlinear. That means it's worth taking the time to get it right, even if the people best suited to make that happen aren't super available, because the difference between getting on the front page of HN vs not is multiple orders of magnitude. (But I think we get the best of both worlds now.)