* more news about Startups, less news about things tangentially related to startups
* less churn on the homepage
* a community made exclusively of people actually building websites
* a limit on accepting new members
* less talk about useless academic subjects
* more "review my new project" submissions
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.
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!"
or, perhaps you'd like a much more heavily meritocracy-based community?