I am strongly in favor of the segmentation of this site but PG has said that he intends to make one site that is the best list of links for hackers, not one segmented site with different lists.
Sure, but IMHO forum posts (ASK YC:) etc, are not really links. They're forum posts - I'm not sure of the value added by lumping them in with news stories/links/articles. By doing this, the forum posts don't seem to get the attention they actually deserve.
Personally I think separating it and having a specific forum for startup topics would really improve things.
"ASK" type comments, which are pretty much a forum. And a separate reddit news type thing.
It seems like if these 2 things were separated, then what are essentially forum posts, would have a better chance of a response.