I remember when people would comment on various Ron Paul stories on Reddit with a similar sneer toward Digg. HN is not a unique community except for the fact that it's thus far remained away from the public eye. The more people join HN, the more frequent the "newb waves" of unrelated stories will come, and the fewer calm periods like this one we'll have.
I'm hoping that HN grows slowly, because it isn't trying for fame unlike Reddit, but I've got no doubts that in time it'll go the way of every other community that relied on an upvote-downvote system to keep users in line.