Every time someone says a website should update their look people think they mean it should look like Medium and be brigaded by design school freshmen who'll make the page weigh 900gb.

I don't know what the original commenter meant, but the text could be a bit bigger and the line lengths and spacing controlled.

The comment metadata could be shortened and humanized, though the audience may find it useful.

There's some bugs with the dropdowns on mobile (haven't been able to close one).

I don't know if that will get them subscriptions, but it'd make the site easier to read.

Ironically, if you look at the HTML classes, they are using a CSS library typically used to make "modern" sites many here revile: http://purecss.io/

You created a strawman argument (y'all want it to be 900gb!) and then counter it yourself with some reasonable suggestions that others here have made as well.

I don't think it's fair to accuse them of strawmanning. They did make it clear that they might be unfairly attributing the argument to the original commenter.

Sure, but the design is objectively bad.

The article's title is repeated throughout the comments list and emphasized. The other comment metadata has the same visual emphasis as the actual comments (except the link and author jump out more than the comment itself). The articles themselves expand to the full width of the window.

I think you mean subjectively. "it's not in the format I'm accustomed to" is not objective in any way.

No, objectively. Unless you're saying it's intended to emphasize the metadata over the content. I'm talking about factors that are measurably detrimental to readability -- not fashion. Visual emphasis isn't new, it's been around for centuries -- it's not just a fad.

There is plenty of introductory material on visual emphasis around, not just covering emphasis in textual media, e.g.: http://daphne.palomar.edu/design/emphasis.html

I agree that line length according to more recent studies seems to be less consistent (some recent studies say speed actually increases with longer lines but there doesn't seem to be any data on comprehension/retention and preference seems to be biased towards shorter lines -- again all of these factors may be cultural). But visual emphasis is a thing -- it's hard-wired into how human visual perception works.

It doesn't emphasize the metadata over the content - they are equal peers.

Most techniques for making metadata less emphasized make the metadata objectively less readable. I like having the metadata there. I like being able to read it. I have no trouble reading the text (because it's a decent size and the layout handles zooming without issue.)

It puts the metadata first with no visual distinction from the content itself. The distance between paragraphs in the comment and between the metadata and the comment is identical.

Also, the title of the article is repeated throughout and drastically emphasised (considering nothing else is that visually distinct and it even has a solid background color).

The typical LWN reader is a heavy mailing list consumer. Emails have subject lines so having subject lines for comments is very familiar. Many people take the default subject heading because they are making an on-topic comment. I think outsiders aren't used to seeing so many on-topic comments so it throws them off.

Using a line break between meta data and content is also a familiar paradigm. Spend 20 years reading your email with mutt or mailx and you'll catch on. ;)

Forgive me, as I truly mean no offense, but this is silly.

Good design makes the content more evident and less tiring to read. The two go hand-in-hand.

Do you favor poorly written articles simply because you're interested in the "content"? I expect not, so why the latent notion that "function = good" and "form = useless"? It's intellectually lazy.