I tend to agree, there is no reason to change the hn look and feel. If it were a corporate product it would have had a dozen product managers trying to make a name for themselves in redesigning it ad nauseum, just for the sake of change and advancing their own careers. Also see: Wikipedia (more or less), Craigslist, DuckDuckGo (I’ll defend that one), and scant few others. News sites like newspapers and large blogs are particularly egregious imo (but I think much of that is driven by demands for revenue by selling more ads and tracking).