I think the overall conclusion from this investigation must be: We'll never know because at the end of the day it's HN's site, and they are the only ones who know how moderation works. They have the logs and (presumably) the materialized dashboards showing what's going on, and we only get a peek at it when the lead moderator (dang) pulls back the curtain a little. He is very friendly, and actually very, very prompt at responding to questions (both over E-mail, and in-thread) but I've always thought the responses about moderation activity are pretty opaque. Any time something that looks like shenanigans gets mentioned, it's always vaguely attributed to "user moderation" or "automated algorithms" such as the flamewar detection, with very few admissions of HN staff putting their thumbs on the scale (in either direction). Best case, if it's true that everything is due to user moderation, it would appear the site is pretty vulnerable to organized brigading (for or against specific topics).
So we'll never know for sure. Please keep writing. I visit here -and- have your site bookmarked because I appreciate the pro-Apple take on tech news, too.
EDIT: Aaaaaaand, in the time that I typed this comment, the article predictably went from normal to user-flagged.
And just to clarify, if enough people flag submissions, but not enough people, then it can get buried but not get the "flagged" tag? Because very few of the DF posts actually seem to get that tag.
But maybe even some light flagging, plus high engagement-to-view ratio (esp. if engagements go many levels deep fast), may cause some "unwanted" content to be buried.
So we'll never know for sure. Please keep writing. I visit here -and- have your site bookmarked because I appreciate the pro-Apple take on tech news, too.
EDIT: Aaaaaaand, in the time that I typed this comment, the article predictably went from normal to user-flagged.