[andrewljohnson]

These guidelines have little to do with it, though the editors probably do. The main thing that distinguishes Reddit, Digg, and HN is pure volume.

If HN had the same traffic Digg did, you better believe that the average intelligence would go down, and you'd need a heck of a lot more editors to keep the content on target.

[davidw]

Well, the guidelines sum up some of the culture, and you're right that it wouldn't be possible to transmit that if too many people showed up at once. However, it is a real thing. There aren't many editors here, and the idea is to keep the volume down by only posting things that interest a limited segment of the population.