Are you insinuating that the key to dissuading the wrong kind of people is to make Hacker News difficult to use? The notion that good users will "power through" a bad design is dubious at best.
I hope that you're not involved in product design. This thought process is not good for anyone.
I really do believe that HN is poorly designed for end users. The UI is not forward with intent, or pleasurable to use. It's been literally years and the expired link issue hasn't been addressed. ---No, I'll stop you right there. It's been acknowledged as an implementation bug, but not addressed. PG's lack of user empathy and stubbornness make HN worse.
I personally find reading HN on a mobile device really frustrating. Horizontal scrolling is awkward and navigating between comments is frustrating. HN isn't winning any awards for UX.
I really do believe that HN is poorly designed for end users. The UI is not forward with intent, or pleasurable to use. It's been literally years and the expired link issue hasn't been addressed. ---No, I'll stop you right there. It's been acknowledged as an implementation bug, but not addressed. PG's lack of user empathy and stubbornness make HN worse.