[dang]

Yes. Actually that fact is more interesting than it looks.

It's all of our good fortune that it's in YC's interests to fund HN just as it is, with the moderators' primary job being to keep it interesting and hopefully keep the community happy. If HN were a startup, we would have to play the growth-hacking game. If it were the media property of some larger corporation, some manager would eventually put a monetization squeeze on it. Either of those tactics would ruin this place, whether or not they succeeded.

YC doesn't need us to do such things because a happy HN is the most valuable-to-YC HN. It's basically an accident—a dual accident of how YC's business works and how things historically developed—that we ended up in that spot. It's a special position to be in, and our first responsibility is to preserve it. Hence our motto, Move slowly and preserve things.