What's unique about Hacker News?

Question

I am thinking about building a product and I'd like to have the same level of engagement as it is here. What are the must haves to build something similar to Hacker News?

eimrine · Accepted Answer

Fuck engagement. Focus on the greatest content possible and support of all kinds of crappy devices. Do not forget to have a thick wallet for keep your similar website clean from images with adware and promo-posts.
If you would build exactly same resource but with even more focus on STEM then I will be your user. But if my crappy devices will not work on your resource because of 1MB of homepage or problems with SSL or urge to show me some "you might be interested" things then I keep being here.
This website is so good that I abandoned to read anything in my mother language, can you build something as great?

notkurt · Answer

For me it's the community, half of the time I'm more interested in everyone's take on a submission than the submission itself

legrande · Answer

> I am thinking about building a product
Hackernews isn't a product as such, more like a forum.
> What's unique about Hacker News?
The site employs minimalism, yet things go on behind the scenes that users aren't even aware of. I only recently learned about /asknew[0]
So features are added, but they don't get in the way of the basic layout. They are silently added.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/asknew