My main takeaway is that the HN system mostly works. You get some minor improvements by choosing the time well. If I wanted to game HN, I see 2 suggestions:

My main takeaway is that the HN system mostly works. You get some minor improvements by choosing the time well. If I wanted to game HN, I see 2 suggestions: * You can create upvotes from fake accounts. I'd assume the moderators to notice this very quickly. * You can find a group of people with 10k karma and ask them how to optimize your content to be more HN friendly a.k.a. interesting. Then everybody wins, so I suppose I can live with it.