> Hacker News has two kinds of protections against fluff. The most common types of fluff links are banned as off-topic. Pictures of kittens, political diatribes

> Hacker News has two kinds of protections against fluff. The most common types of fluff links are banned as off-topic. Pictures of kittens, political diatribes, and so on are explicitly banned. This keeps out most fluff, but not all of it. Some links are both fluff, in the sense of being very short, and also on topic. Not explicitly covered in the Submissions section nor the Dilution sections is the trend toward more general and larger volumes of less tech-focused or leading-edge content. Perhaps it was not as noticeable in 2009.