Your central mistake is in believing that hacker news is designed in such a way as to maximize popularity. Runaway popularity is actually a detriment in this case as it would decrease the signal to noise ratio and destroy the value of the site. As well, since there are no ads on HN the site is nothing but a financial liability to Paul Graham / YC so increasing popularity would just increase that liability.<p>The goal, instead, is to create a community of folks with similar interests (loosely orbiting around the developer/startup barycenter) who share interesting news and engage in worthwhile discussions related to that news. With that goal in mind then a lot of the design of the site starts to make more sense.