I had down voted you (and thereby might be the person whom you are referring to who did so) as you are making an anecdotal statement that is sufficiently far-fetched as to be ludicrous. Now, in your follow-up, you seem to be lumping me (the person who downmodded you) into the category of "moderators", which is technically fine but then useless: I am another member of this site, just like you; the mechanisms here are then no different than they are on almost any other system that ha peer moderation. If you are using Slashdot, reddit, Digg, DISQUS... virtually any modern forum solution, there is a downvote feature, and it works virtually the same way. Yet, now your new comment (which I also "downmodded") seems to be ignorant of this mechanisms on all of these sites, disregards the list of sites procided by DanBC, and continues to not list any other sites thaw here moderation was not a common topic; you seriously just look like you've never used any other websites at this point.

Okay, I make a clear distinction between community up / down voting, and owner moderation. I should have been clearer.

Don't worry about the down votes. They are frustrating, but anyone on HN knows that you occasionally get a random down vote. By themselves they're usually meaningless. Yes, people should really either engage in the debate and not down vote, or not engage, and down vote, and explain if needed. (Personally, reasons for down voting should be restricted to "this comment does not belong here; it adds nothing to the discussion".)

I think there's general agreement about voting on HN - up vote things that are well written, even if you disagree. Don't down vote just because you disagree. Down vote things that add nothing to the discussion. Flag spam or other blatantly harmful stuff.

But all of that is separate from the issue of trusted people within HN locking threads, deleting threads, deleting posts, changing titles, banning users, etc.

> No insight and no accountability = bad moderation practices.

I honestly truly disagree with this. Strongly.

It's really simple to say "Here are a list of rules. Don't break them or we mod your posts". But when Bob starts skirting the rules there can be huge flamewars. Bob says he clearly wasn't breaking any rules, mods say he was, other people jump in saying that he wasn't and the mod is dumb and has made a bunch of similar stupid decisions, then other people jump in and say that maybe Bob was a bit close but he does so much good that we can make an exception for him, then other people leap in and say it's a stupid rule anyway. Meanwhile, this thread is getting so much attention that the real stuff of the forum is being ignored. New users are not interested in that stuff. The thread creates an unpleasant atmosphere which is noticed by other people. Now whenever Bob replies to someone who's a mod there's suspicion that Bob is just flame-baiting.

Anyway, I'm doing what I hate, so I apologies to everyone on HN. I'm setting my noprocrast settings for 48 hours. This is my lost post on this thread!