To pick one example amongst many, when there are articles about “12 year old does X”, there is plenty of low quality rage and noise about how valuing accomplishments based on age isn’t acceptable and so on, yet I’ve never seen such a title get edited.
Painting it as something the moderation team systematically does is disingenuous.
I'm sure that we've edited such titles in the past.
"I've never seen it" is a poor metric for making general claims about moderation. People see and remember only what stands out to them, and what stands out is determined by their pre-existing views. That's why the general claims people make about HN moderation are so starkly contradictory. If there's one mechanical, utterly reliable phenomenon I've learned about from moderating HN, that's the one.
Painting it as something the moderation team systematically does is disingenuous.