[dang]

What's going on at Reddit right now is a significant story, plus HN and Reddit have a long history together (indeed, a common origin). So it's appropriate for the story to be on HN, and it has been: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9822580. When it comes to pile-on stories, though, you're right. You're also right that the topic should be discussed here in a substantive way.

Generally, any time there's a frenzy of copycat stories, the approach that works best for HN is (a) to settle on (hopefully) the most substantive version of the story for discussion, (b) downweight the follow-ups, and (c) have a new thread if significant new information arises. I don't think the current story passes that last test, though it's perhaps interesting how people are seizing on it.

[heimatau]

This submission isn't contributing to the understanding of the drama. Instead, it's getting caught up in the emotional and herd mentality.

[dang]

My comment agrees with you about this particular submission. I probably should have made that clearer.

Btw, the HN rules ask you not to complain about downvotes in comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[heimatau]

You are correct. I thought the guidelines encouraged discussion instead of down voting but...upon looking at the guidelines, I was wrong. Also, I don't mind the down votes, all I did was ask others to discuss more instead of clicking a simple down vote link. Many can down vote but how many can have a conversation?