dang says elsethread, paraphrased, 'we evaluated that flagged post and figured it was probably legitimately flagged, but after users contacted us^ to say it should be unflagged, so we listened to them and unflagged it'.
Good intentions often lead to bad outcomes. The mods have the best possible (and still imperfect) judgement of all of us, and they misread the circumstances, same as those users who flagged it. So they'd have to ban themselves right along with everyone else, which would be the end of HN.
That the actions of other users ended up being reversed is no excuse to demand that they be banned, especially on topics where agreement will never be reached^^ by the community — such as Apple, China, or Firefox. Please be more cautious about demanding bans of those whose actions result in disagreeable outcomes, even if you doubt their intentions.
^ Using a post or comment is a terribly inefficient way to go about doing this, but it certainly does tend to produce maximum-drama results. I don't think anyone should be banned for taking that approach — maybe they didn't realize the Contact link exists or reaches the mods! — but I'm exhausted of otherwise good-standing and high-karma users using posts and comments to bring things to their attention. I'm also glad to see the thread and discussion here, which contradicts my own viewpoint. I have no easy resolution for that cognitive dissonance.
^^ Please don't call for me to be banned if you disagree with my reply. However, if you feel I've violated the guidelines in some way, I do of course encourage you to let the mods know using the footer Contact link.
EDIT: HN's contact email is working fine; the evidence presented was known to be invalid before it was posted and used in bad faith to bait the conversation.
It worked fine when I emailed them yesterday using a non-Gmail email client and server. You’re suggesting that all email for YCombinator is down (or, worse, some/all of Google Apps) so that seems worth proving out. I checked and there aren’t any posts today about Gmail or Gapps being down. Diagnostic superpowers, activate!
Are you getting a bounce/timeout from a real email client through a real SMTP server? I know some mail servers I used to operate would reject your telnet test as shown, so I’m not really surprised it failed at a Google SMTP endpoint.
Are you attempting to email them using Gmail, using a third-party commercial service, via a cloud/datacenter-hosted personal SMTP server, or a home internet connection SMTP server?
If the SMTP server is under your control, is TLS correctly configured on it to modern standards? Do your server’s A/PTR records match the hostname it’s configured to use?
> You're suggesting that all email for YCombinator is down
No, I'm suggesting that their mail server is not reachable over unencrypted SMTP from random probably-residential IP addresses. This is fairly typical IME, and is why
> Using a post or comment is a terribly inefficient way to go about doing this [...] I'm exhausted of otherwise good-standing and high-karma users using posts and comments to bring things to their attention.
> maybe they didn't realize the Contact link exists or reaches the mods
is a non-sequitor. The point of comments as reporting medium is that they can be made via the same channel that was used to read the (offending or inaccurately-noted-as-offending) posts in the first place.
I emailed them a few minutes ago and they replied to confirm that they’re able to receive email.
While I respect that you may be demanding a certain standard of their mail server’s telnet responses that Google is refusing to meet, I imagine either that you are able to send them email and simply do not wish to, or that you have consciously chosen not to be able to email anyone hosting email with Google in deference to your objections at how Google operates. In any case, whatever the reason, I wish you the best of luck with your choices.
