You have to admit, that wasn't exactly unintentional on PG's part.
The site isn't hackernews.com, it's news.yc. That comes with certain connotations.
One of which is that the site gets free publicity and name recognition. Another is that people are on their "best" behavior, since their comments might be counted as part of their YC app.
The downside is that people are going to associate anything that goes on with the core YC project.
