I wish designernews was more active, really like the site though.

for webdesignernews, I don’t really think it qualifies since a central entity decides what is news and what is not. It’s more like a news blog. It also doesn’t seem as though users can comment on the links, but I could be wrong about that. I’d put it in the same category as a site like sidebar.io. What makes sites like HN interesting is that the users publish and the users decide what’s newsworthy... for better or worse.