Edit vs Delete
mdasen: You've hit upon a good point.  Personally, I think it needs to be left up to individual conscience.  Why?  In times past, you'd say something to someone and that would be the end of it.  Sure, maybe it'd be repeated as hearsay, but people don't put such stock in that and you can deny it.  Now, we're all going around with histories following us.  If that's the case, we'll all become lame.  None of us want certain crap out there.  Maybe we shouldn't have said it, but if you take a hard stance on that, it just means people will be lame.  They'll be hesitant to post, they won't be at all controversial, etc.HN people generally have a good attitude and post cool stuff.  It's a great community.  I'd rather people retain the right to deny a bit of what they've posted than loose some of the awesome posts.  Plus, maybe the delete function stops stuff from becoming flame wars with people deleting rather than continually fighting.  I don't know.