[samwilliams]

I think the HN crowd has always been interested in this sort of stuff? It certainly has since I started reading it (~7 years ago). One of the things that I like about HN is that we are not completely inward looking.

From the guidelines:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

You could certainly say that a BBC group being forced to sign a confession for attempting to conduct an interview 'gratifies one's intellectual curiosity' about the world, but it could certainly fall under 'Most stories about politics, or crime', too.

Either way, as you point out, once a post has over 100 points you probably have your answer!

[rodionos]

  > once a post has over 100 points you probably have your answer!

It seems that we both agree that it's an Off-Topic article at face value and yet it is On-Topic based on the votes. The votes in effect override the second criteria of relevance, not unlike the final clause in Azimov's law of robotics.

Hence I'm genuinely curious about any shifts in the audience demographics that are occurring.