Appreciate your work Dan, just saying that I can see why people stray from the "perfectly good" community: because when it comes time to finally have your launch moment, it's so tough on HN. And I bet it feels like a kick in the guts for people who've slaved over their app and finally talked themselves into showing people what they've been working on.

And it's tougher again without asking friends to give you a boost and if you're outside the main active timezones.

If there was a top bracket or sidebar that helped bring Show/Ask topics to the attention of all users, that would help IMO. There's also no incentive to upvote topics, no explicit messaging "Should this make HN front page for a bit?" or "Was this good?", so I bet many don't hit the arrow.