The current article may not be well-written, but its claim to primacy is obvious. I have a hard time justifying massively lifted content on the HN front page.

Ars practices journalism, which means they take a primary source and then enrich it with useful information while also making it easier to understand.

You're absolutely right in that many blogs simply regurgitate someone else's content, but Ars is not one of those sites.

If you want to be heavy handed in your moderation and become a content curator, you'll need to get better at distinguishing the two.

this is one of the reasons we shied away from heavy handed moderation at reddit -- it's just too difficult to do it well.

Also, primacy doesn't always mean it is better.