I think there is an argument to be made that a site like this can be both minimalist and accessible, and that the dichotomy between a feature-rich HN and a HN with quality comments is possibly false, borne out of a lingering fear of a slippery slope leading to Reddit. Elitism may play a part in that - a better looking, more accessible site might by definition attract more people, and more people would dilute the quality of the discussion pool. I've seen 'features' like the awkward structure of nested comments, the broken pagination, etc. described (granted, by people who probably wouldn't actually know) as ways of keeping the riff-raff at bay.

OR maybe it's essentially a hobby site written to justify an obscure and difficult to wrangle Lisp dialect that only a couple of people ever work on, and it's literally not worth the time for at least one of them to tweak.

I think dang has mentioned they're working on adding some stuff anyway so... who knows?