I also wish that the site would be more "on topic". I imagine what's happening is that people submit and up-vote anything that's remotely interesting or import

I also wish that the site would be more "on topic". I imagine what's happening is that people submit and up-vote anything that's remotely interesting or important regardless of whether or not it is really "hacker news". But this site isn't supposed to be the only news source in the world. Even an important story can be an irrelevant one as far as HN's boundaries are concerned, if it would already be reported in the news somewhere.