To be honest, this is actually a good strategy ... producing a poor layout that is. I've found a lot of times, a post either has a lot of comments/votes becaus

To be honest, this is actually a good strategy ... producing a poor layout that is. I've found a lot of times, a post either has a lot of comments/votes because the product idea was stupid and/or something unrelated about the product was less than impressive. So if you are launching a product on Hacker News, it might be worthwhile to create two separate landing pages. Create one that is less than informative/provocative to get the votes/comments and then switch to a more informative one when you have secured a front page position.