I'm pretty sure the poor design does not encourage people to come there if they do not expect to find something valuable.
The overall quality of shared news is really good, the comments are not imediately accessible after reading the news, people express different points of view.
A lot of hacker news reader arent english native speakers, and it's hard to troll efficiently with a language you do not master.
Eh, I much prefer using an app on mobile. All the buttons (up-/downvote, collapse) are too small, and a lot of space to the right is often left on the table, which makes longer comments very hard to read.
I think it neither poor nor outstanding. Simple or oldschool would be both better terms to describe it. Yes, it certainly has some outstanding attributes (e.g. color composition), but it is far from perfect. Small voting buttons and long lines are just the two things that immediately come to my mind.
It's really functionnal. I've nothing to complain about. But for people used to go on facebook & co there is a huge gap. I'm pretty sure it does filter a part of trolls.
