I think it did. I'm an old-skool Slashdot person who just moved over to HN a year or two ago, and there are lots of things I really miss about the Slashdot mod

I think it did. I'm an old-skool Slashdot person who just moved over to HN a year or two ago, and there are lots of things I really miss about the Slashdot moderation system. One of the most noticeable things is trying to skim a discussion with thousands of comments. On Slashdot, you can set your threshold to +5, and see only the very most insightful comments, no matter where they are in the thread. On HN, there's a lot more digging required to get the gems. That said, I do think HN's "story-selection" algorithm is an improvement. What shows up on the front page relies a lot less on the quirks of the editors, and seems to result in a much more diverse set of posts. As others have mentioned, I think the top-level moderation is the most important factor keeping HN worth reading. It's dang intervening and setting the tone which does the most for HN at the moment. We need to keep him happy; and I hope that he has a "succession" in place in case he's ever unable to continue the work.