Successful niche forums/boards have a social contract that the participants enforce on each other. The fact that you on HN need x1 points to vote comments down, and x2>>x1 points to kill stories (and on Slashdot, the karma-system), ensures that new members are accepted into the contract by peers based on contribution.
In older times, boards had moderators, and admins picked out active members as mods based on their performance.
But this model is susceptible to group-think, especially when a topic falls outside the contract. It just happened here during the presidential election that apparently the body of users are sufficiently politically diverse, that intelligent, respectful debate prevailed over mindless up-voting of anything adhering to one specific mindset. It could very well have went in the other direction. It's absolutely no guarantee that you because someone make insightful tech/startup comments, that he also is going to vote down a stupid comment, even if it's in favor of his political POV.
Solving this problem; making sure that a community like HN can stay intelligent, and not be diluted as it gains popularity, I think, is a very big opportunity.