Since it's the same name, My personal concerned about possible separation of people whom would normally contribute good content and comments to HN proper. Perh

Since it's the same name, My personal concerned about possible separation of people whom would normally contribute good content and comments to HN proper. Perhaps I'm off base because I don't know the way the site is set up, but are comments and articles shared between the sites in any way? Also, more importantly, has there ever been a survey or statistics collection as to where contributers are geographically located?