You know, I just quickly zoom with a double tap and nail the UX element.
We have better elements to use, but I must also say those tend to come with costs.
Right now, HN is so lean, fast and clean, I will gladly work a little to vote or do some action in return for what is otherwise one of the best "just read the discussion" presentations on mobile. It's a pleasure.
People abuse the code formatting for block quote. It looks bad on mobile, but it also looks bad on desktop because it's a fixed width Font, which is not what you want for a quote. The solution is not to change the style – it's for people to stop using code style for quotes! (The style does actually seem to have changed on mobile in the last year or so: I think it wraps now, whereas I think it used to have a horizontal scroll bar.)
To quote something else, manually insert a greater than symbol at the start of every quoted paragraph,
> Like this
Which obviously doesn't indent nicely but is perfectly clear, and works well with HN's low formatting style.
Think for a moment why an app should ever be considered necessary to render a web site. Especially one with little in the way of demanding UX requirements.
How do you vote without zooming?
Ever tried to touch "comments" on headline and accidentally clicked "hide"?
Ever tried to touch the "Hacker News" menu item and gone to "new"?
Everyone is used to these things, but they are textbook examples of bad mobile design.