I've had a registered account here for just shy of 7 years now, and you're not giving the current moderation team nearly enough credit. dang and company have resolved a lot of long-standing user complaints, they are proactive on policing the site, and they are generally exceedingly fair and even-handed.

dang specifically has the patience of a saint.

Huh? I routinely read people here writing that HN has the highest quality discussions of any active online fora. I happen to agree.

Also, HN has dramatically increased in quality over the past 6-10 months. It's been very noticeable for someone who's been here for 4 years.

Can HN be an echo chamber? Yes, at times. But much less than other online fora that I've participated in (most Reddits are 1000x worse, for example)

Does the site design itself leave a bit to be desired? Maybe, but I've grown quite fond of it.

And what exactly "empty promises" are you talking about?

I didn't read the post as a criticism of the community but rather a criticism of the technical workings of the site. Which is correct, HN is lacking a lot of things that make even the most basic modern forums more user friendly. The site performs poorly on mobile, you can't collapse comment threads, the reply button disappears sometimes unless you click "link", etc.