For some reason I can't reply to am1988 but maybe he's right, I don't know.
Any site which requires this type of thing to signup sounds like one I don't want to be a part of. Seems like a recipe for a hive mind.
You get a hive mind or you get regression to the mean, by which I mean you either aggressively filter for people with specific qualities, which is apparently a hive mind scenario, or you end up with the same kind of commentators you find on every other let-everyone-in platform.
So Hacker News is a regression to the mean, then?
Sure. It's much more general-interest than it used to be, and business content has cratered.