Authors start with a blank page, so if there's something there then it's probably there for a reason. It doesn't really make sense to claim that the ecommerce sites of the past were messy "by accident" but that doing the same now would be superficial. The design of Hacker News is great, but I don't think there's one Ultimate Best Design that should be applied to every single app.

No, but you also need to have a very clear design which transmits a mental model of how your site operates. I'd be skeptical of a site that was messy and over cluttered especially if I was going to be using it to trade knowledge!

I think a clinical, empty look wouldn't do, but adding more mess is the wrong direction.

If clutter made it harder to form a mental model then everyone in Vegas would be lost.

edit: But the reason everyone isn't lost is because Vegas is basically one straight road with flashing lights on the sides. Which is more or less what I'm proposing.

Also, I see your point about the knowledge seeking demographic. Not sure whether I agree or not. For every Jimbo Wales looking to hire a philosophy postdoc, there could be a hundred MySpacers looking to hire someone to clean out their bongs. Or maybe not, who knows.

Also, on a different topic, there should be a way to embed ads for experts onto my blog or homepage.

Thanks - this is on our to-do list as well. You could use SpringWidgets now but we'll probably make a Digg type widget down the road and let bloggers embed referral codes in it.