Let's say I were to redesign Ebay as a big picture listing site (ability to bid and buy, coming later)
Would anyone consider this a ready to launch replacement? If they don't value commenting as one the of the most core features what hope do they really have?
To me HN is more valuable for the comments then the aggregation. I often skip the article and just look at the comments. Digg cannot now compete with this and if this is their priorities: big gaudy pictures, voting, and distant third or less, commenting... well.
good luck I guess but we have different priorities on what we were hoping for and expecting and need.
I think that "launch" is a relative term here. I mean that in the sense that Betaworks have been entirely open about the process from the start, and are aware that 90% of their audience right now is curious techies like ourselves. I very much doubt that they'll be promoting it much.
This is an alpha, or a beta, or whatever you want to call it.
