What I was talking about in the quoted bits of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024069 didn't have to do with topic scope. It had to do with article quality, which is orthogonal to that. I agree with you completely that HN should be broad rather than narrow in scope—that's highly desirable and we spend a lot of time trying to nudge and nurture things in that direction.
Just for clarity, when I was talking about how users are emotional about the front page and react intensely when they see something they don't think belongs there, it was in the context of an experiment we'd run to randomly place stories from /newest on the front page. Users reacted disastrously, not so much because of scope but because the median article's quality is just really low. That's true about in-scope topics like programming as well as other topics. I hope that makes sense.
As for 'who gets to be a member' - we don't restrict that nor want to restrict that. Everyone with intellectual curiosity, i.e. everyone, is welcome. The only requirement is actually using the site in that spirit. This is not so easy, of course, especially when the more activating topics show up.
Just for clarity, when I was talking about how users are emotional about the front page and react intensely when they see something they don't think belongs there, it was in the context of an experiment we'd run to randomly place stories from /newest on the front page. Users reacted disastrously, not so much because of scope but because the median article's quality is just really low. That's true about in-scope topics like programming as well as other topics. I hope that makes sense.
As for 'who gets to be a member' - we don't restrict that nor want to restrict that. Everyone with intellectual curiosity, i.e. everyone, is welcome. The only requirement is actually using the site in that spirit. This is not so easy, of course, especially when the more activating topics show up.