The Hacker News guidelines are a bit broader than what some participants here remember (or have ever looked up):
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
Glad you linked to that, I was also bringing it up a while ago. People need to read the whole thing.
Personally, what attracts me to hacker news is not the actual hacker news. I can find that anywhere I want. It's that the type of person who would participate in a site called Hacker News is likely smart and holds interesting, well-reasoned positions on a whole lot of things that are actually not Hacker News.
I know all the actual "Hacker News". Like any serious person I am on the damn mailing list. But ... I like the people who'd be attracted to such a place. I read a lot of the comments. It's worthwhile.
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html