[tptacek]

This "captain obvious" stuff isn't helping you; it's just going to get everything you have to say flagged. You sound upset. I don't think I understand why --- having links replaced is totally standard HN practice, happens all the time, and works to the overall benefit of the community. But I don't have to understand why you're upset for you to feel that way. Rather, I'd just say, step away from HN for a bit until you can write with a clearer head.

[dastbe]

i do get where they're coming from. right now we rely on dang and other mods (do they even exist?) doing the right thing in terms of making benign and beneficial changes to the linked story and being visible about making those changes. i've certainly seen communities where this trust ended up being abused due to scale or change in moderatorship.

it would be nicer from a transparency perspective to make these kinds of changes easily auditable by adding an "edited by" in the full page or a dedicated audit log. it would strike a balance between letting moderators improve the community while improving transparency at the system level.