Agreed. As it stands, all it takes for Hacker News to become Reddit is for the hackers to be outvoted by the Reddit crowd. The wildcard factor is PG, who will p

Agreed. As it stands, all it takes for Hacker News to become Reddit is for the hackers to be outvoted by the Reddit crowd. The wildcard factor is PG, who will probably step in more aggressively if and when he thinks quality has slipped too far. Remember that "hacker" can mean a variety of things. For YCombinator, a "hacker" is a smart person who likes to build great things, usually using the medium of software. For other communities, "hacker" might mean script kiddie, or World of Warcraft gamer, or tech fanboy. So even the current standard - on-topic = interesting to hackers - won't necessarily protect HN.