My question is, when it is a public service announcement that can protect or prevent further harm to our community (say the MIT shooting last night), then does it make sense?
I agree the witch hunt stuff is appalling though.
I would say no, Hacker News is not a source of local public service announcements.
May I ask "public service announcement" in which country? There are presently more than 190 member States of the United Nations.
Does that include Taiwan which is a country but we aren't allowed to mention it?
Take a look at swombat's top-level comment in this thread. There's a good take-away here: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
I believe not. People go to other places at the internet except from Hacker News. They can get the information from there.
I agree. Keeping the 'comments' part apart, I feel it was OK that this kind of story is shown on the frontpage. I visit google news multiple times in a day, but today HN was the first place I came to know about this incident. For the person living in that area, this can be a very useful info.