Ah, the classic claim that there was never any doubt of success. Always works best after the fact.
HN is very predictable, in some ways. It's not predictable with 100% accuracy like digg or reddit.
But, still, HN people have a group identity to a large degree. And if you attack that group identity, the group is interested in the attack and they are ready to circle the wagons.
Both interest and wagon-circling in this context mean upvoting so other people see it.
Hasn't just about everything Giles' written about HN come up on the front page?
How great the just perceptible change can be made to become by making the rate of change extremely slow is a matter that still remains for investigation. It is worthy of note that it has been found possible in 5.25 hours to crush a frog's foot, without a sign that the pressure was felt, by screwing down a button at the rate of 0.03 mm per minute. A similar experiment showed that a live frog can actually be boiled without a movement if the water is heated slowly enough; in one experiment the temperature was raised at the rate of 0.002 Celsius per second, and the frog was found dead at the end of 2.5 hours without having moved.(1) If a frog can be crushed or boiled without any evidence that he has noticed it, it is at least an interesting question of what can be accomplished in this direction with human beings.
(1) The literature on these experiments with frogs includes Heinzmann, Euber die Wirkung sehr allmaliger Aenderungen thermischer Reize auf die Empfindungsnerven, "Archiv f. d. ges. Physiol." (Pfluger), 1872, vi. 222. Fratscher, Euber continuirliche und langsame Nervenreizung, "Jenaische Zeitschrift," 1875, N. F. ii. 130. Sedgwick, On the Variation of Reflex Excitability in the Frog induced by changes of Temperature, "Stud. Biol. Lab., Johns Hopkins Univ.," 1882, 385.
That Garfield submission on the front page, OTOH...
it's not contemptuous, although it may seem contemptible. I just did the math, knew the tactic would become infallible over time, and used it when signs indicated it would succeed.
of course this implicitly challenges your statement that the site's the same as it ever was. I actually don't have any proof to back that up. I think it would actually be reallllllllllllllllly hard to quantify. I could say there's a frog in boiling water effect there, but then there's the possibility that HN aka News.YC simply had a bad day yesterday, and if I had chosen another day for my random return, I could have come away with the impression it was improving.