The corrollary to this is that all community-moderated sites (including this very one we sit in) tend toward Digg, and ultimately toward Cheezburger. There's a

The corrollary to this is that all community-moderated sites (including this very one we sit in) tend toward Digg, and ultimately toward Cheezburger. There's a cycle: Clique with narrow shared self-moderated interests, becomes cool, attracts more people with broader interests, self-moderation becomes wider and people vote up things with more general appeal, until ultimately it all becomes a new "cool things on the internet" bucket. I tend to prefer sites with stronger guidelines and stronger moderation. Stack Overflow has strong guidelines but still gets its share of detractors, because it doesn't allow "cool things on the internet". Slashdot is still mod-curated, has sections, but stories don't hit the front page unless voted up. It's a different model to HN, but not that different. It still relies on other people's clicks to make me see it, and in that model the community becomes the key factor. Is Slashdot's community dead? That's the question, not just the infrastructure.