My current hypothesis is that it's an individual moderator (perhaps showing off) running a script without official sanction, hence the silence from the admins.
The way the post on the subject[0] was buried without official comment after over 500 upvotes suggests a certain amount of institutional blindness.
I think PG did comment on a subsequent post asking why post on subject[0] was taken down. I am not sure if commenting on a soon-to-be-killed post constitutes an official comment though, perhaps it was decided there is no need since according to policy meta-concerns should be dealt with using email.
So instead of having a thread pop up to address meta-concerns, they have to be dealt with privately causing any front page title change to now have 10-20 comments at the top discussing the title change. All the actual discussion about the article is well beneath the fold now
The way the post on the subject[0] was buried without official comment after over 500 upvotes suggests a certain amount of institutional blindness.
[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013