I up voted you because you're correct. It would have easily sufficed as an email to PG.
However, the impact of appreciating something and having communal pooling of appreciation affirms the intent. I want HN to remain what it is and I did not want to be "just another email" in PG's inbox; I suppose by submitting this in the first place I contributed to "what HN is not" but I do still feel that my submission was appropriate in the sense that my intent was an intelligent choice and not a "masturbatory" choice.
> However, the impact of appreciating something and having communal pooling of appreciation affirms the intent. I want HN to remain what it is and I did not want to be "just another email" in PG's inbox
This is an incredibly convoluted explanation of what can simply be called grandstanding. I appreciate your intent, but please - we all want HN to remain what it is. If your intent was to thank pg, email him. If your intent was to communicate your want for HN to stay the same - do so when there is some threat to what we hold valuable. Otherwise: post intelligent replies, downvote trolls and submit the occasional illuminating article. Threads like this (and others like it) do no good for any of your stated aims.
It's not the single odd submission that comes up that is really what offends, it's more of the slippery slope it invites that historically can overwhelm the quality of popular websites. Take the frequency of outlier commentary and multiply it by the internet and you get trouble.
It can be curbed with a culture of self moderation, it can be curbed with enforced rules and other barriers, a good early example of this is Something Awful's combination of introducing a registration fee along with a reputation for banning users who posted crap. It's survived through the years and I'd venture this was a factor.
But the point is if your site becomes highly popular there will always be the risk of drowning under a low signal:noise ratio. Hence the sensitivity to posts like this here because <asskissing>the HN crowd as a whole has a lot of experience with this phenomenom</asskissing>.
I think there is a defined line between obsequiousness and appreciation. I feel the tone of my post actually leaned on the side of appreciation than it did "obedient or servile". I suppose that any sort of "Thank you" statement could be taken for fawning, particularly in a community that values a karmic rating system; as I said in my reply above, I still think my post was submitted with a clear and intelligent choice.
However, the impact of appreciating something and having communal pooling of appreciation affirms the intent. I want HN to remain what it is and I did not want to be "just another email" in PG's inbox; I suppose by submitting this in the first place I contributed to "what HN is not" but I do still feel that my submission was appropriate in the sense that my intent was an intelligent choice and not a "masturbatory" choice.