It _was_ originally just a place to post links, but I think it's clear by now that it's grown into something much more. Many of us value HN for the quality of the conversations -- there are so many other places (like our personal Twitter feeds) where we can find links of interest.

Much of the value we get is from the content we all generate through these comments. It's clear to me that there's room for improvement when it comes to giving structure to all the great stuff that's discussed here. My gut feeling is that a wiki isn't the right way to go about it either, but there is certainly a lot of quality content being generated here.