zlacker

I agree. Reddit started to get really messed up when the "silly pictures" posts were allowed to dominate the front page. Those posts attracted more of the same, and the change in the comments that followed should not have been a shock to anyone--the same people upvoting the picture of the "jesus toast" were the same ones making stupid comments.

However, all of this is missing the main point: for a site to be popular (lots of eye balls) and be able to sell itself to a large media company for a large sum of cash, it needs to appeal to more than a small, coherent community. Reddit changed because their founders wanted to cash out. HN isn't changing because you have no (apparent) goal of cashing out, and are thus willing to keep HN as it is.