[walterk]

> Democracy says that this place is peopled with hackers and if the hacker citizens upvote a story then it is, ipso facto, of interest to hackers.

1. Not all hackers share the same interests. Just 'cause some hackers upvoted a story doesn't imply that the story is of interest to (1) hackers as a category, or even (2) the hacker community found at Hacker News. You're conflating two uses of the word 'hackers' with your "ipso facto": one referring to a specific subset of hackers, the other referring to hackers as a whole.

2. Mobocracies are just democracies characterized by unruliness and impulsiveness: it's perfectly feasible to have a mobocracy composed entirely of hackers. You don't need demi- or quasi-hackers to cause the problems we've been seeing, and it's not clear that this is in fact the cause for deterioration in relevance of submitted stories. I wouldn't be surprised if most of it comes from hackers who just aren't being thoughtful about what they submit.