"Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions. Users should vote and comment when they run across something they find interesting—not for promotion."
(I didn't downvote or flag your comment, just wanted to let you know about the guideline.)
Thanks for the reminder! I read that at some point.
The problem with this is exactly what I'm trying to address in the AskHN submission: the probability of a random person running across interesting content is much smaller, than that of a group of users with agenda, who monitor new submissions/comments on a constant basis, as they appear.
I.e. there's a non-zero probability that my controversial submission looks interesting to several random people, and maybe they even give me an upvote, but at the same time there's a 100% probability of being flagged and never making it out of "new". In my opinion, this misbalance completely breaks the moderation system.
I also don't appreciate it when comments are detached from their parents without a note from the moderators. I've had a few comments taken completely out of context because they were detached from their parent into their own top-level comment.
