[jmduke]

I'd argue that it doesn't have consistently insightful commentary with regards to these issues.

I love reading HN comments on tech news/debates/articles because I know there's going to be a huge depth and breadth of different commenters' experiences and anecdotes. This generally isn't true with regards to political/social stuff, where the vast majority of commenters have the same belief and experience.

That being said, I don't really mind the submissions -- because they're easily identifiable -- I just hope they aren't signals of a larger trend towards generalism. (Reddit, too, used to be predominantly tech/programming articles.)

[Jach]

I like to keep in mind http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html for these topics. And it does seem like there have been more and more of them--hopefully at worst it's a trend to "tech, programming, startups, and politics" rather than full generality. From that essay, the large number of comments on these threads is explained by "Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions." Though I would add that this extends to many more subjects, including bashing companies.

If submissions to nothing more than image macros ever get popular, then it's time to jump ship because HN has become way too much like Reddit.