HN isn't trying to appeal to the average news site user.

Utterly irrelevant.

As irrelevant as the criticism of the LibreOffice website design.

Widespread usage and accessibility is specifically a goal of LibreOffice. That is assuredly not the case for HN.

I didn't say that the website was fantastic. I merely said that it hasn't and won't prevent widespread usage and accessibility of LibreOffice.

Ironically, HN doesn't have the greatest web design, yet it is extremely usable, and very popular.

The way I see it, the LibreOffice devs are focussing on cleaning up the OpenOffice codebase, when they get the resources and time they can update the website.

I'll give you an example of where "clean design" causes lots of problems. Go to the Gnome website. They used to have a lot of documentation for developers. And I mean highly meaty tutorials, discussion papers, usability studies, etc. There is documentation now, but it's appallingly awful.

Did a clean design help Gnome? No. They cleaned it up all right - by removing anything of any use to anyone.