Not only will they not make the website better they are incentivised to not make it better. With the current look/feel/behavior be it good or bad they have grown because of it. Any change they make is likely to make the number of users go down. And as much as the users care about quality the owners metric is always number of users so why change it if it is "working". I am on the watch for a new social tech news site that is optimized first for mobile to replace HN which I am 100% sure will be made and I will switch to at some point in the future.
HN isn't really a commercial venture. It has some pretty significant benefits for YC, but pg's mostly opposed to trying to grow the site. In fact, he seems to more or less resent the growth that has happened due to the concomitant decline in overall quality.
Even if you were consider only the benefits YC gets from HN (exposure for YC companies, recruiting, and cachet), the benefits to the first from larger crowds are, I'd bet, offset by the slow dispersion of high-value members that has accompanied the drop in quality we've seen over the last couple years.
I'd be willing to bet that HN would probably serve YC's purposes better with 5,000 - 10,000 users than with 50,000 - 100,000.
I agree with you but I think doing things like eliminating table layout and having some sort of improved experience on mobile would not affect usership at all. You could keep the look and feel the same. There are profound technical issues with the site that affect everyone that could literally be addressed in an afternoon if anyone cared.
That's strange for hn because it's known that in a vast and rich sea such as the IT world, stability leads to a slow/fast failure or disappearing. They'll have to innovate, for their business and for the users.
And yet the reverse is true too. Over-innovating which I see as almost universally putting form ahead of function kills web enterprises dead too.
I think craigslist is a great example of success going with the most minimal "innovation" - in the last ten years I can think of two changes there, and one wasn't even voluntary. First, the map-view for housing listings and second the giving up of sex services to other sites like backpage under threat from a bunch of point-scoring district attorneys.
Just because you have grown in the past with a certain tactic does not make that tactic the most effective choice. And, certainly, if the industry changes so much that mobile does indeed take over the personal device market, having a subpar experience on mobile phones could then have an effect that previously wasn't apparent.
"We make the best candles in all of the world!" didn't allow the candle company to compete with the lightbulb maker. (Albeit a less than accurate comparison, it illustrates my point I think.)
Rather than just saying you're wrong, I will let Luke Wroblewski explain why changing a working website to put mobile first is rarely ever wrong no matter how successful your site has been in the past.
