Discussion was buried low the comments because it was "down-weighted" by the moderators:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223555#23225685

The thread you're referring to is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223555. There is ample explanation there of what happened.

thanks for the hard work here dang, I really appreciate your moderation. I hope you can appreciate our inquisitions from time to time. I think this kind of model works well in general to keep both sides accountable.

I don't remember exactly, but originally my comment wasn't top-level. Did the mods do that, or is that automatic with high karma comments or something?

We sometimes do that to protect an on-topic subthread from suffering the fate of its on-topic parent.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23225522