The morphology of the site must in some way shape the interaction between users, and by extension the way they perceive the community as a whole. Different decisions both in policy and in design would lead to at least subtle differences in what Hacker News is.

But i'm not confident that adding a feature to organize the posts a bit more necessarily undermines something fundamental about the nature of HN. Nor do I think the only thing keeping this place civil is pg keeping his thumb on the ban button.