Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

I'm fairly new here (I'm a refugee from Reddit) and occasionally I read comments where someone complains that a post isn't appropriate or that the standard of conversation has gone down recently. And whenever I read those comments I'm troubled by a nagging sense that nobody has a plan. That things will gradually get unbearable and that when they do the people who built up this site will just move on and found a new community and the whole process will start over.

Is there a plan? What's stopping 100,000 Digg users hearing about HN on TV and showing up with posts on Obama's latest news and pictures of their cats?

Clearly there's the code behind the site, the karma system and minimum thresholds for downvoting and so on. I've also seen people linking to the guidelines (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) occasionally, to try shame people into behaving themselves.

I've got to be honest though, I can't see anything that's fundamentally different about HN that means it will avoid the fate of those other sites. You let me register, what's to stop others? Do you have to "Accept" the guidelines when signing up? I can't remember, even if you do though, let's be honest, nobody's going to read that.

I don't know, do you think HN is structure well enough to prevent it happening? Is there a special plan? Or do people just expect to have to move on when things go down hill?

Here's my thought on the matter... The "Killer feature" here is the lack of killer features. There are no buddy lists, stupid picture icons, special groups, or karma-whoring incentives. It's just a simple place to exchange news that is generally relevant to a hacker community.

The lack of needless bells and whistles to constantly hold peoples attention will generally make this site un-fun for the unwashed masses of Digg and Reddit refugees.

BTW, welcome to hacker news...

the quick and dirty answer is the userbase. it doesn't, at least right now, turn into digg/reddit/slashdot because the people who want to see a digg/reddit/slashdot are already at digg/reddit/slashdot.

the community here likes how things are and has a vested interest in keeping HN like it is. so thats what they do, try and push out the bad where they can and promote the good.

I'm mildly pleased that HN shrank, not grew, this month. Not by a lot, but still. Hopefully that won't reverse. If the community doesn't grow, it can't turn into another digg.

What? there's no karma-whoring incentives? Damn! I totally thought I was going to get to change the color of the toolbar...