[geerlingguy]

This is somewhat true; I know I'm trained at least a tiny bit to look over at the 'byline' on posts if the title attracts my attention...

But it's also muted a bit by the fact there are no icons, no large flashy attention-grabbing bits, and everyone gets the same muted colors for domain and submitter username.

I like that a lot, and contrast it often, in my mind, with Reddit, which now has user avatars, little flashy icons, an annoying habbit of pushing 'full' posts and ads everywhere...

[llm_nerd]

All 100% true, it is more muted, but another effect that happens is that when a source is a sure thing on HN, it's self-reinforcing. People start watching those sites for new entries and submit them, and HN's automatic behaviour is that if you submit an entry that already exists, it just upvotes the existing entry.

Get dozens of people watching the hot blogs for content, each running to submit it, and in an instant it's to the front page and the reinforcement redoubles.