There are always ebs and flow. The community is less niche now than it was a few years ago, so naturally the ratio of stores on the front page to stories I choose to read has gone down a bit.
But I still find that there are many exceptional comments and so even though I now consume a smaller percentage of overall daily content than I did a few years ago, I don't think the quality of the content I consume via HN has gone down at all.
There are occasionally threads that appear to have no interesting comments in them, and those are usually the sort of vapid, TechCrunch stories or tabloidesque personal interest stories that many of us find annoying.
For what it's worth, I also find it annoying to read weak technical blog posts written by people who are clearly just trying to generate blog traffic and don't really have anything interesting or motivated by a real startup problem.
But I still find that there are many exceptional comments and so even though I now consume a smaller percentage of overall daily content than I did a few years ago, I don't think the quality of the content I consume via HN has gone down at all.
There are occasionally threads that appear to have no interesting comments in them, and those are usually the sort of vapid, TechCrunch stories or tabloidesque personal interest stories that many of us find annoying.
For what it's worth, I also find it annoying to read weak technical blog posts written by people who are clearly just trying to generate blog traffic and don't really have anything interesting or motivated by a real startup problem.