HN deleted the No.1 post 10 min ago

There was a link to an (not very good) article but with a very funny photo[1] of Linus Torvalds in Japan giving thumbs up to the Windows 7 release. This article disapeared from No. 1 to nowhere. This ycombinator stuff always had a little bad smell, and here you go..

[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/offthebroiler/4036243510/sizes/l/

"HN" didn't delete it; there's no conspiracy. Users (perhaps after a certain karma threshold) are able to flag posts that aren't appropriate for the site. Apparently enough users thought that was the case, so it's gone.

User guidelines: "Please do not submit posts complaining about posts were killed or comments that were downmodded."

Site guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

I don't mean to be rude, but it sounds like a funny picture next to a bad article is not what this site is about-- although admittedly this is my first post, and I'm commenting on a member of the first cluster of articles I opened. Even so, the guidelines are clear.

It's an experiment, so I imagine we'll all have to put up with things like this. Let's see if it works.