A lot of it has to do with being able to see the points. People think “it has a lot of points so it must be right”, which is rarely true, especially on Reddit. HN hides the points on comments and has a bit of unpredictability to the sorting to allow things to float up provided they haven’t been flagged/downvote bombed. I think it is the largest reason HN is still healthy, other than the great moderation.