"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
I can tell you this makes me feel unwelcome, and makes me disappointed in our industry in general. Dog whistles are often very obvious, as is the case here. Not allowing any common-sense deviation from "always presume good faith" is absolutely ridiculous.
In this particular case it looks like we see common sense as pointing in opposite directions, but such differences are inevitable any time that interpretation and judgment calls are involved, which is certainly true of moderation. Beyond that, it's hard to answer general statements about HN moderation when they don't include specific links. You might well be talking about comments that we simply didn't see (cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24161292). There are many other possibilities too.
Usually when I hear generalizations about HN moderation on political/ideological issues, they're being made by strong adherents to one ideological position who perceive the moderators as being secretly against their position. That's problematic because there are intense cognitive biases conditioning such perceptions, such as the one where people are more likely to notice cases they dislike than the ones they agree with, and to weight them much more heavily (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). If you consider that phenomenon, you'll notice that it guarantees that unbiased moderation will always be experienced as biased by passionate perceivers, regardless of which position they adhere to. This is a double bind situation for the moderators, and it makes such complaints difficult to respond to except by pointing out that the other side feels exactly the same way.
I don't mean to say that that's the case with your perceptions, just that it's hard to discuss these things without concrete cases to look at. Based on your comment, my guess is that we would agree on egregious cases (and those certainly get moderated here, except when we don't see them), but would perhaps draw the lines differently on borderline cases, like the GP. That too is inevitable when one is trying to moderate a community that has countless different perspectives—it's impossible to satisfy everyone, or even to satisfy anyone completely. But there's a choice here too: we want HN to be different from the places on the internet that are dominated by the online callout/shaming culture (not because the callouts are always wrong, but because of the systemic effect on the community when they become the default). For that, I think the plausibility guideline is the right medicine. It basically leads to scolding/banning for egregious cases, forgiveness for borderline cases, and open-mindedness in unclear ones (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24073607).
"Callout culture" has only become a problem now that it is hurting the powerful. To create an inclusive community, you have to actively root out bigotry. Most bigotry is rarely explicit, but couched behind terms like "degenerates."
When you allow bigotry to fester, you are making the decision to exclude people like me and include bigots. You will have to make uncomfortable decisions. There's no way around it. The assumption that you can largely ignore barely-concealed bigotry and also be welcoming to minorities and LGBT folks is false, but widespread among liberals in the tech industry. A recurring theme is that high-status straight males are making most of the decisions, and even with the best intentions, they fail horribly at inclusion because they don't listen to folks not like themselves.
It's 2020, and there is ample evidence both around us and in the academic literature about the omnipresence of racism especially in our society. Does HN and Y Combinator actually want to put in the hard work to create an inclusive environment? So far, the answer is a clear no.
I realize this kind of behaviour has been normalized by the president over the last four years, but I thought HN was better than this.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Beyond that, I'd need to see specific links to give you specific information. Always happy to do that.
Despite its distasteful origins, it's becoming a catch-all for self-aggrandizing anti-social behavior, and destructively anti-normative sentiments.