Whereas if I let the frontpage get filled up with crap, or the comment threads filled up with mean or stupid comments, people would start leaving pretty quickly

Whereas if I let the frontpage get filled up with crap, or the comment threads filled up with mean or stupid comments, people would start leaving pretty quickly. So almost all the time I spend thinking about HN is spent thinking about how to avoid that. I'm afraid that is an excuse; it's a solved problem (almost) because of the users and editors. Search is also a solved problem: link/form submission to Searchyc - done. :) (but I get the feeling you have something against searchyc - it always gets ignored despite being a great resource)