I mean that downvoted content is already not-prominent. You don't need to remove it; the signal has already been sent that we don't want this kind of thing here.
If there's stuff that we don't want, but that gets upvoted, then the signal still needs to be sent, and one way (not the only way) to send it is to remove the stuff in question.
Two points where we may differ, but I probably don't care enough to argue them:
It seems obvious to me that, at least in theory, stuff can get upvoted that we don't want here, for reasonable values of "we don't want". Do you disagree with this? (And in practice, I think this particular post is an instance of such stuff.)
I don't necessarily think mods should be working from objective standards.
I've said this elsewhere, but I rather suspect that downvoting stuff doesn't decrease its visibility much. I haven't actually applied a regression to the data (though now that I think of it, that'd be an interesting problem), but eyeballing vote totals on my replies heavily downvoted vs. comparably upvoted posts at the same level of the comment tree, I don't see much difference. That implies that about as many readers are expanding the tree as would follow it normally.
...It seems obvious to me that, at least in theory, stuff can get upvoted that we don't
My stupid fanfic chapter was banned without explanation so I reposted it; somehow it was at +7 when it was deleted and I think silently deleting upvoted posts is a disservice to LessWrong. I requested that a justification be given in the comments if it were to be deleted again, so LessWrong readers could consider whether or not that justification is aligned with what they want from LessWrong. Also I would like to make clear that this fanfic is primarily a medium for explaining some ideas that people on LessWrong often ask me about; that it is also a lighthearted critique of Yudkowskyanism is secondary, and if need be I will change the premise so that the medium doesn't drown out the message. But really, I wouldn't think a lighthearted parody of a lighthearted parody would cause such offense.
The original post has been unbanned and can be found here, so I've edited this post to just be about the banning.