In my quick research, these are some of the most common type of articles that pop up (on the font page) in no particular order:

• New products. (e.g Apple TV released, Saas/startup launched)
• Useful utility (e.g CSSgram, free icon set)
• Show DN/Site Design
• Humour
• Cool tricks (e.g BMW i8 in WebGL)

These above articles while of course welcomed don't usually tend to spark interesting discussion. These categories usually tends to deviate to what the shiny new thing is.

After that comes the Ask DN which is more a way to get people's opinion about things.

These are some of the types of articles left in no particular order:

• Articles, sometimes with lots of fluff/already known/common knowledge, about Apple/Steve Jobs
• Controversial opinionated articles (UX is/not UI, Designers Coding, Skeuflatomorphism)
• Submarine articles, but usually done more directly by the company blog/Medium.
• Cheap attempts by companies to promote themselves.
• The rare incredibly thought provoking article. (e.g "What Screens want", Eli Schiff's early articles)

Discussion on Apple/Steve Jobs doesn't tend to say anything really new in general.

Controversial opinionated articles have the same problem. They tend to get lots of attention during their prime time—UX vs UI articles might turn out OK on DN today, but skeuomorphism vs Flat won't—but also usually don't get very interesting amounts of discussion. In my experience, the comments tend to mirror the opinions from the previous discussion about it. The conclusion to many of these questions tend to be relative, subjective and contextual anyway.

Submarine articles and cheap marketing attempts tend to be about how their product is a solution to something they're talking about.

If you take all of that away you won't have much left. Actually if you go back pages of Designer News you'll notice how little we tend to comment at all.