I'd add this permanent reputation loss to the cost of the "experiment". It's useless to say it's temporary since it could at any time be imposed again. The users clearly don't get a vote here.
Transparency at HN seems like an absolute necessity at this point, if there's any desire to maintain the nature of this place. Every mod action on this very public forum should be very public on a special page people can watch. Short of something like this the conversation is just going to start slowly migrating to a new host(s).
I think reddit needs the same upgrade. It's like a missing component of a 2016 social site.
"In what way did he alter comments?" really deflates the charge in my opinion.
He played a bad joke by swapping out his name for mods. Pretty tame stuff really. A stupid little regexp substituion prank of the kind programmers play all the time.
But yes, he did violate a trust. A sysadmin has a sacred duty and he violated it, but in a very mild way that is understandable and not a cause for future concern since he clearly realizes he made a big mistake.
Transparency at HN seems like an absolute necessity at this point, if there's any desire to maintain the nature of this place. Every mod action on this very public forum should be very public on a special page people can watch. Short of something like this the conversation is just going to start slowly migrating to a new host(s).
I think reddit needs the same upgrade. It's like a missing component of a 2016 social site.