Also, everybody can 'flag' articles that are not suitable.
What was your favourite social news site before ?
And I flag a lot of articles, but very few of those get banned, same principle as with submitting. If a few people flag and a lot vote up, it stays. And "few" and "a lot" are relative terms here. They'll change with time.
I've seen narrow and deep focused discussions be replaced with wide and shallow discussions on many sites, but in rough order: Slashdot/Digg/Reddit/programming-reddit/science-reddit and I know I'm forgetting a few that came and went fast.
The process is known as "the September that never ends".
Slashdot is a bit better now days though the rate of submission is slow.
When PGs essays first led people away from Slashdot to Reddit, there was a noticable drop in the quality of Slashdot. And early on Reddit was a like beautiful jewel of social news sites.
Yes, that's why a lot more people will make it into something that's DIFFERENT from what it was when there were a lot fewer people.
You've been here almost 2 years, in that time you have not made a single submission
Red herring.
If you don't like it then take action
He can not do diddlysquat. Only pg and the mods could take action by viciously removing any article which even remotely strays from a pre-determined core character.
There is an awful lot of 'oh, I really don't like the direction HN is going in' here, as well as 'it used to be so nice'. I don't get that, it's pretty good right now
That's because we've seen this movie before. You may not have had a front row seat for the downfall of your favorite social news site, but many of us have seen it happen many times.
I haven't been here nearly as long as you have, and I concur there are some 'growing pains' but on the whole it is pretty good.
And as much as I like this place, I predict it is doomed, and before long even you will abandon it.