HN is mainly goodwill for YC (any VC would pay a fortune to have HN and its audience).
So the parent comment seems to suggest that it's damaging to the goodwill of the site to disable signups.
If this was a permanent change, I'd agree, but it may be temporary, and it's not totally disabled (you can still signup by submitting content, as someone else wrote).
Er, no. HN is part of YC's screening and application process. You have to have an HN account to apply to YC and if you have been an active user, your comments here basically become part of the screening process. It is part of why HN is better behaved than a lot of forums: Being an asshole here can help close doors for some folks which are potentially worth million$.*
* At least, this was all true last I heard. I have not looked at their application or application rules/process recently.
vladd, while I completely agree that "HN is mainly goodwill for YC," I think potentially your subsequent parenthetical statement shows misunderstanding of a different business model, the VC model. Or, maybe it was just ambiguous language easily misinterpreted by me (and, I'd assume, others as well).
Many content-based companies would love to acquire HN and its audience (e.g. Conde Nast's Reddit acquisition). VCs would love to invest in an HN spin-out to reap returns from said investment via a sale of the entity. However, "VCs would pay a fortune to have HN and its audience," reads more like VC-as-owner/PE rather than VC as investor.
Maybe I'm digging too deep in the semantics here, but this seems to be a point that is often lost and VCs vaunted (or derided) as less investors-cum-advisors and more private equity slash-and-burn corporate raiders.
So the parent comment seems to suggest that it's damaging to the goodwill of the site to disable signups.
If this was a permanent change, I'd agree, but it may be temporary, and it's not totally disabled (you can still signup by submitting content, as someone else wrote).