or, perhaps you'd like a much more heavily meritocracy-based community?

I agree that there are more than a few links that don't interest me, but that doesn't mean I throw up my arms and say, "Well, that's it! This site has jumped the shark!"

Do you actually believe that "Startups" and "Hackers" ONLY build websites?

Assuming that you yourself "actually build websites", this seems like a good project to take on. The HN code is open source, it would be neat to see someone make an adaption of HN that fits the spirit of what they believe the site should be about.

I'd be very curious to see what the community and activity level around such a site would look like.