What's the alternative? Squeezing millions of HN readers into the top 30 posts? Not only it's too little room for everyone worth seeing to be seen, it's also a statistical certainty that a sufficiently large crowd will have 5-10 censors who will block any discussion they don't like.
it's also a statistical certainty that a sufficiently large crowd will have 5-10 censors who will block any discussion they don't like
I don't see how the voting system enables anyone to block stories hitting the front page. Mods can block things (presumably) but that could still happen with a more personalized feed.
One simple solution to the problem of articles you think should be on the front page not getting there is for you to look at /newest more and upvote the articles you like. Once an article gets a vote it seems to attract more votes even just within /newest. If you're not seeing the articles you like then maybe submit some?
Ultimately HN is about squeezing millions of readers in to the top 30 posts. That's probably why it works quite well. I have no doubt that a lot of people find their tastes aren't well catered for and leave for other sites, but that's OK. No one should stay on a website they don't like.
> Squeezing millions of HN readers into the top 30 posts?
That's a vivid way of putting it (good writing on your part!) but - yes, that's pretty much how HN works. I usually describe it as "non-siloed": https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all.... The DNA of the site is that everyone sees the same things—it doesn't get sharded. Other sites have social graphs and follow lists and whatnot, but this one doesn't. More on that at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
