From the point of view of someone gaming HN, there's nothing to be gained by knowing the ranking algorithm. It doesn't matter if you know five flags will bump you off the front page, or that mods can adjust the position of your story, because that's not something that you can use to your advantage. The only thing you'd be able to do with that info is to use it maliciously, like flag a story off the front page. But everyone already knows that you can remove a story via flags, and it's pretty easy to figure out how many flags are required.

Honestly the argument "there are bad people, we need to worry about them" is getting tired. It was cool when pg was showing off Arc to the community. It felt like we were all discovering something new, and how to build a community together.