In my opinion, the problem is less correlation of articles on the HN front page and more correlation across news sources. A lot of stuff from the NY Times gets to the front page, for instance. What makes that really bad is that there are a lot of stories behind paywalls or that require registration. The discussion is a regurgitation of discussions elsewhere because everyone comments on the title.
I would love it if paywalled/registration required sites would get downweighted so as to encourage a discussion of the article. Another change I'd like would be programming language stories downweighted based on how many other stories on that language recently hit the front page. It's no secret that the latest fad is Rust, and while it's everyone's right to like any language they want, it certainly doesn't increase HN's value to have yet another story about a library update for [language of the week], and a general discussion about [language of the week] rather than about the post.
> I would love it if paywalled/registration required sites would get downweighted so as to encourage a discussion of the article.
That's only a problem when these sites get posted a lot.
Counterpoint: The London Review of Books had a few front page appearances here, it is a site posted quite seldom, it has spectacular articles, and because it's posted so rarely, pretty much everyone who clicks on it will still be within his number of "free articles".
I would love it if paywalled/registration required sites would get downweighted so as to encourage a discussion of the article. Another change I'd like would be programming language stories downweighted based on how many other stories on that language recently hit the front page. It's no secret that the latest fad is Rust, and while it's everyone's right to like any language they want, it certainly doesn't increase HN's value to have yet another story about a library update for [language of the week], and a general discussion about [language of the week] rather than about the post.