For sure, but how much that's a good thing vs. a bad thing is not so clear. This is one of those cases (like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20186280) where it's useful to have exactly one thing you're optimizing for. It helps you know what to do in situations that would otherwise be head-scratchers, and the consequences are often surprising yet rather easy to derive.
On HN, the one thing we're optimizing for is intellectual curiosity. That's merely one kind of curiosity and by no means the most powerful. Interest in personalities, especially celebrities or the infamous, tends to be fuelled by one of the higher-octane varieties—call it social curiosity. There's nothing wrong with social curiosity. It's human. But intellectual curiosities are smaller fish than that, and on HN we need to do things to prevent the bigger fish from eating them all up. Everything in our bag of moderation tricks is there to help with that.
I remember an email thread with you some years ago where I was complaining about someone/thing and you not only responded to the problem brilliantly but also smacked me deservedly for my part in letting the problem exist.
Your optimisation approach seems to me to be working out nicely.
