What you seem to be referring to is valuing the word of an expert, or someone known to have more knowledge in an area. That is totally valid of course, and should be strived for (we should not listen to pundits, we should listen to experts).
However, geographical segregation (I take this to mean separating AND isolating, which might be my mistake -- segregating does not necessarily entail mutual isolation though I took it to mean that based on what was said) does not achieve this result (assuming the only people who know about SV live in SV), but it DOES exclude people who know a lot about relevant parts of SV life/culture/business that do not live in SV.
In the general case, it is not strictly impossible (nor even improbably, I would argue) that someone OUTSIDE of your geographical area (especially if you consider that people move around) does not hold important knowledge on anything related to your geographical area (and even more-so with super generic areas like "business" and "startups" and "venture capital"). If the possibility exists that someone with such knowlege exists outside of your geographical community, the geographical community will experience (I use that word liberally, you don't know what you don't know) a loss in potential knowledge -- in short, the person who COULD have contributed knowledge cannot, since they are excluded.
So what if annoying people drown out the voices of the insightful ones, or even cause people to leave? I think this is relatively difficult, without a pretty large out-pouring of annoying. They would have to be annoying enough to drive away people abroad (all potentially gained due to inclusion) AND at least one local person. I don't think HN is at that point yet, and I think it's really hard for any medium to get THAT noisy, and be obviously too noisy to be any good.
(oh also -- I didn't downvote you, actually upvoted, I just want to debate the point, since I have thought that before)
(also -- definitely, I should have qualified "community" with "community that seeks to grow knowledge, membership, involvement, etc"
However, geographical segregation (I take this to mean separating AND isolating, which might be my mistake -- segregating does not necessarily entail mutual isolation though I took it to mean that based on what was said) does not achieve this result (assuming the only people who know about SV live in SV), but it DOES exclude people who know a lot about relevant parts of SV life/culture/business that do not live in SV.
In the general case, it is not strictly impossible (nor even improbably, I would argue) that someone OUTSIDE of your geographical area (especially if you consider that people move around) does not hold important knowledge on anything related to your geographical area (and even more-so with super generic areas like "business" and "startups" and "venture capital"). If the possibility exists that someone with such knowlege exists outside of your geographical community, the geographical community will experience (I use that word liberally, you don't know what you don't know) a loss in potential knowledge -- in short, the person who COULD have contributed knowledge cannot, since they are excluded.
So what if annoying people drown out the voices of the insightful ones, or even cause people to leave? I think this is relatively difficult, without a pretty large out-pouring of annoying. They would have to be annoying enough to drive away people abroad (all potentially gained due to inclusion) AND at least one local person. I don't think HN is at that point yet, and I think it's really hard for any medium to get THAT noisy, and be obviously too noisy to be any good.
(oh also -- I didn't downvote you, actually upvoted, I just want to debate the point, since I have thought that before)
(also -- definitely, I should have qualified "community" with "community that seeks to grow knowledge, membership, involvement, etc"