[po]

I think the problem is: what do you do when you really like a site and the community of people that revolves around it, but your interests are broader than just what that site covers? What if you want a hacker news, but for other topics in your life you are interested in?

You are tempted to try to broaden the definition of that niche site but pushing it's boundaries. It is up to the site to push back on you and resist that.

I think there is a lot of confusion around what qualifies as "Hacker News" both in tone and scope anyway. The niche is ill-defined. I could probably even defend a position that focusing on startups isn't really hacker news either even though it's clearly an interest of pg's.