Hi @triptych ,
As @saiki suggested, do take a look at this discussion. It has many useful answers.
Many developers say that Hashnode is awesome because of nice people and lack of spammers. So, to answer your concern about moderation, I would say that it's very important to be alert all the time so that people don't spam the community. There are users who just keep sharing their own (less quality, clickbait) links and there are marketers who share totally irrelevant stuff. This is where moderation comes to picture. We would like to have content that is directly or indirectly related to software development. To enforce this, we have put together a set of guidelines and we always make sure you have quality content for reading. Apart from this we don't have any other strict moderation rules. We welcome all types of developers from all over the world to come here and have good conversations.
We are also working on upgrading the "nodes" (scheduled to go live this weekend) so that awesome people like you can manage all the different sub communities inside Hashnode and play key roles in keeping the community healthy.
To answer the last two questions :
From the feedback we received: Developers mostly use Hashnode everyday to keep themselves up-to-date and relevant. For many, it's a part of the morning routine to come and check Hashnode so that they don't miss anything important.
Our broader vision with Hashnode is that we would like to connect developers of all expertise levels and help them share and consume knowledge in a better way. From Day 1, we have put focus on creating a conversational community, rather than a traditional Q&A website, and we would love to take this vision forward.
Hope this helps! If you have any feedback, please feel free to email me. :)