[bairrd]

Enjoy the crime wave seems similarly inflammatory and impolite, but I find HN moderation frequently falls on a certain "if you say something rude/inflammatory but phrase it a certain way it's okay" which drives me up the wall.

[dang]

If by "HN moderation" you mean what the HN moderators do, that's not an accurate description either of our intentions or our practice. It's good to be careful with such perceptions as they are notoriously subject to sample bias. Lots of past explanation if anyone cares:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[dfxm12]

Yeah, as a meta comment, I've seen personal insults thrown around (including at me) that don't get flagged, but what does get flagged sometimes leaves me baffled.

[dang]

There's inevitably a lot of randomness, given the quantity of things that get posted here. That is probably enough to explain what you're seeing. Flags are mostly by users; moderators don't see most of what gets posted here. We try to review all the flags but that doesn't help if a post doesn't get flagged in the first place.

If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. If it's something egregious, you can help by flagging it and/or letting us know at [e-mail].

In any case, there's no consistency of moderation across all the posts, nor can there be. But certainly there's consistency of intent: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html