There is (subjectively) a marked deterioration of comment quality on front-page discussions in the past few days, I feel. I have also noticed that HN articles are getting linked on reddit more frequently (I use both networks, but for highly disparate purposes - gotta get those funny .gif's somewhere). No data supporting this but I fell it's a trend and I'm not liking it.
Few days? Try since forever. As people increase the SNR gets larger. Even on reddit when it started, it was heavily tech focused, you'll find a comment that says it's going downhill. Hard to say what the numbers on HN are like growth wise in comparison to reddit (which has their subscriber numbers on display).
