Most off-topic major news ends up being flagged. There are two main pieces of world news today: 1) Malaysian airlines plane downed in Ukraine; and 2) Israel launches ground invasion of the Gaza strip. I would guess stories about either one are likely to be flagged here.

Yeah, but you've been on here long enough to know that major off-topic news won't get flagged/will be forced up on the front page for a while. HN understands that sometimes our tech news bubble has to be popped with a little dose of the real world every once in a while.

This isn't just a plane crash, this was an aircraft that was shot down while on a perfectly normal commercial flight between two major international hubs. This could have very serious, long-term global ramifications and every person who comes to HN should be aware it happened.

From HN guidelines:

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports [...]. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair point. However, for this specific event other news channels are good enough. More importantly posting politically charged stuff on HN may over time increase the incidence of this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8042471 ;-)

If someone lives in a hole so deep that they haven't heard about this, I'd say it won't make much of a difference for them. I haven't flagged this, but I think you're overestimating the importance of the presence of this story on HN.

The value HN brings to a story like this is the in-depth, rational analysis that's much better than the news can muster.

Already in the wayback thread on this, I've discovered a news tracking startup and an in depth discussion for people who take this exact flight and route.

This wasn't a plane passing between Baghdad and Kabul or some similar dangerous route. There's been a couple of other flying related accidents today also. This is the notable one.

If you take a plane frequently (like I expect lots of people here do), you'll probably be interested in this story and the kind of in-depth discussion that only HN can bring to bear on it.

edit Just found out the relative of a person I know was on the plane and is now dead.

Honestly, this was a great reply until that last sentence. I recommend you remove it.

I don't know who's downvoting you. I removed it, you were absolutely right and I let emotions grab hold.

You'd have to be living in a basement not to have heard of a major airliner being shot down.... oh wait...

I think that's an HN corollary to the 'on a computer' patents.

Just add "on twitter" to any off topic news item and suddenly it's on topic.

Very easily flagged off the main page. Here's some folks discussing it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048550

There were probably a half dozen of those today. The first one was here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048083

Geeze I've been visiting HN all day and didn't see this one. Was it pushed off the main page artificially?

It's on topic with the Wayback Machine involvement.

Yes, and I'm glad that I was allowed to change the title of the article to indicate the reason why this is relevant to HN.

Edit2: and now the title got reverted to the article title, which obscures what's interesting to HN readers. Oh well, inflexible policy in action.

EDIT: Given the poor quality of the discussion, I now regret posting this link. Very little discussion of the Wayback machine and how this is a new and interesting way to collect information, and lots of off-topic stuff on the right to be forgotten or non-wayback-machine-related items about this incident.

Reminds me of 'add "over the Internet" and patent' tactics.

Ok, we'll change the title back again. I don't think this thread was destined to be very substantive, though. The topic is too hot, for more than one meaning of "hot".

Thanks, dang. In hindsight, yeah, this was not a good thing to post, even if it is very interesting that the Wayback Machine can play this kind of role.

We do sometimes edit mainstream press headlines to replace a generic phrase (like "web") with a technical name (in this case, "wayback machine" or maybe "internet archive") that HN readers are comfortable with. So your edit was fine. We just didn't notice that right away.

I found this to be the most interesting posts on the subject.

This is the last straw. I'm done with this shitty community. Ciao