Dear HN: please use "flag" more often

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html says "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." I'd like you to extend that to "If they'd cover it on Reddit". I'm not saying Reddit's not interesting or worthwhile, I'm saying Reddit already has all this stuff -- there's no point in these two sites being clones of each other.

Examples currently on the front page that are not by any stretch "hacker news": "one man has written virtually every pop song in the last 20 years", "why is the american dream dead in the south". Also suspect: D&D's 40th birthday (sure, nerds care, but does this make me smarter?) and a Roman glass gaming die that's for sale at Christie's (are we Craigslist?).

I know why these articles get submitted: they are interesting, so they get up-voted, and HN has karma points, so people try to get more of them. Merely refraining from up-voting these things isn't enough -- HN has a lot of general audience traffic these days who will up-vote without considering relevance.

And yes, I know crying "this isn't news for hackers!" is basically the same as old fogies who used to cry "this isn't news for nerds!" on Slashdot. But look what happened to Slashdot. You have the power to preserve the relevance of HN to hackers, by flagging stuff that is off-topic, even if it's really interesting.