"make a new post."

Or perhaps a new site for just 'hacker news' without the rest ;)

Flagging only works if the moderators + pg agree it's off topic (Enough people flagged the Marriage article and it was killed, but then was apparently brought back to life anyway) :/

Appealing to the community to stop upvoting non hacker news and checking the [new] articles for more relevant articles seems like it may have more effect on keeping the magic alive here.

If the community decide they want to read the same sort of articles you find on the front page of Reddit/Digg etc, then so be it, but I personally think it'd be a shame. There's plenty of interesting hacker stories in the [new] section that aren't getting on the front page.