I'm going to demote this submission now. I will come back and read it properly when I have the several minutes it will take to do so.
I don't remember what happened to item 8052399 at the moment.
Personally, I don't see this as being just about you and OP, everyone else has a right to see this as an instance of poorly done moderation on a site we all use.
The discussion is continuing. You just posted to it.
The HN front page has never consisted of just the most upvoted posts. If it did, HN would be unrecognizable. Whatever you call this policy—people say 'moderation', 'curation', 'censorship', and other things, depending on how they feel about the most recent thing we did—it isn't secret and it isn't new.
I'm happy to debate this with you till the cows come home, but my first duty is to see that the stories on the front page are the most intellectually substantive of the ones currently in play. I'm not seeing that here.
Is this for the reason that you do not want site criticism on the front page, with lots of people commenting about the policies? Instead the site would rather only one person emailed you about the problems rather than hearing a mass voice of concern?
This is the biggest entry on HN today, yet you have decided to remove it from the front page! I realise that at this moment in time you have not read the thread, but this is one of the issues which was highlighted and one that also pisses me off!
Secondly, regarding your concern - I'm not a mod, but I'll take a stab at why the guidelines are the way they are:
HN, above all else, wants to be a place where hackers find interesting stories and discussions. Meta threads are generally not "interesting", not in the way that HN wants.
But that's not the only problem - the problem with "meta" threads like this are that they are very superficially interesting - after all, they concern one of the few things all of HN has in common - HN. But almost everyone here has ideas of how to improve HN - almost everyone here sometimes has things they would like done different. If every user wrote a post on this, that's all we'd talk about. Moreover, since most users are talking from a position of ignorance compared to the mods, oftentimes what they talk about will simply be wrong without them knowing it.
Therefore, the best solution is exactly what HN asks - email questions directly to them. I've never done so, but from what I understand, they usually answer.
Also, in terms of timing, you couldn't pick a worse time to complain about the moderation - this is literally the time in history that HN has been the most open and straightforward about moderation policies, and they're doing IMO a fantastic job too.
Secondly I would disagree that the "best solution" is to email them as a single entity. Emailing the powers that be could only be the best course of action (about topics such as this) if somebody organised a mass email campaign. Seeing as the site is a medium for news and communication, I feel having this thread in full view of all eyes may not be the "best" but it is still a good solution.
Also, excuse me but "things they would like done different"? All OP asks for is not to have something he posted replaced with something else, and that's how it normally works already, it's not an "idea", it's a status quo, and it's desirable.
The slot you fill when you submit a new story to HN is community property. If you're worried about the outlandishly weird case of having your name attached to something that a mod decided was better than your submission when it actually wasn't, submit with a throwaway account.
None of this is news. The site has always worked this way. What's galling is the reason people are bickering about it now: because the moderator is making an effort to be more transparent about it.