My take is its worth fighting for. If your dismayed by a slide in the quality of submissions and comments, submit high quality content and don’t submit junk, make high quality comments, upvote high quality comments and down-vote trolling and trivial comments. Most importantly, be polite and generous to those you disagree with. The way to fix problems isn’t less engagement, it’s more. If HN ever fails it won’t be because of ‘them’, it will be because of us.
Hard to differentiate the signal from the noise.
But I find this urge to visit HN at least once every 2 weeks.
And I like the general high quality and good/positive community towards people that build things.
Now, consider OP, that you might be asking a self selected group of people who visit often and that people who have lost interest won't see your question.