emailing hn@ycombinator.com is possibly a better way to raise a question about moderation like this fyi. mods may not see this comment but they probably will see a direct email.

theyre probably the only ones who can answer your question / nudge you in a direction of understanding appropriately.

No, I don't think it is. I didn't want to reach the mods necessarily. I wanted to check what the picture was regarding the general opinion on this kind of practices, hopefully with personal experiences from regular users rather than, potentially, getting some kind of formal statement that is further from what the actual moderation activity is like, either coming from moderators themselves or from users flagging or downvoting content.