Thanks for that tip. You're right: the limited feature set is one of the best features of HN. As is the site's super-permissive policy. Alas, many if not most

Thanks for that tip. You're right: the limited feature set is one of the best features of HN. As is the site's super-permissive policy. Alas, many if not most of the popular submissions returned by the "?points=" URL parameter are of an ephemeral nature (e.g., posts about SOPA and PIPA that no one will care about in a couple of years), as opposed to submissions of lasting relevance for the HN community (e.g., essays like "Worse is Better" -- http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html -- or "The Story of Mel" -- http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html -- both of which will be of interest to the HN community for a long, long time). I'm not sure it's possible to separate the truly timeless submissions from the ephemeral ones without relying on the judgment of the community.