Yes. Things like this often get memory-holed. I don't know if it's by users or mods, but because I have showdead on and this post still can't be found on the front (or next) page, I tend to think the latter. It also doesn't say "flagged" on it.
This is a weird post: it's been popping on and off the front page for me, which might have something to do with the "vouch" feature I just learned about. It seems like it's the object of a tug-of-war.
Thanks for the explanation. I'm sorry that my misunderstanding of the UI, and some bias around the subject, led to conspiratorial thinking.
I wish the community didn't have such a slim tolerance for discussion of this subject that's not uniformly toeing the progressive line, as I thought this was fair in tone and argument, but if I'm in the minority, it's nothing to go nuts about. I can see both sides.
Posts about this and related topics get heavily flagged regardless of what side they're on. I don't see the community in toto as driven ideologically one way or the other, though obviously some subgroups are.
We turn the flags off sometimes when an article is particularly substantive. For example, we did that yesterday for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10923885, because that article was factual and had historical value. When we do that, though, it isn't because we agree or disagree ideologically.
It seems more of an effort to retain people working on the project that fall into the protected categories, and losing those people is a real possibility if someone else's negative attitudes get back to them, regardless of whether they're vocal about it.
I'm not sure whether I think the public spaces bit should apply to everyone though. Certainly project leadership should be held to it if that's what they're aspiring to.
No moderator touched this post. It doesn't say [flagged] because we only print that when the thread is dead (closed to new comments) and the software doesn't kill threads when there's an active discussion.
It did say [Flagged] for a while, though. I was reading the discussion and it bounced in-and-out of existence while I was trying to contribute. The Reply button would disappear; at one point the link and title were removed, then restored. I guess this is what the Vouch system is for.