Hopefully people will, you know, stop dying and we hackers can go back to do real relevant things like instagram clones and settle once and for all which one is the better Lisp.
Some other suggestions along the same lines as you suggest:
Interrupt a court case so that the courtroom can appreciate the
plight of dying African children before they get back to quibbling
over legal wording.
Speak at a conference for accountants so that they can appreciate
the plight of dying African children before they get back to
fiddling with spreadsheets.
Share this in sexual abuse groups so that they can appreciate the
plight of dying African children before they get back to discussing
their own troubles.
Visit schools and interrupt classrooms so that they can appreciate
the plight of dying African children before they get back to
learning about math, English, or history.
---
Or... how about we keep human interest stories that would otherwise be covered by major media off of HN unless there is a component of the story which is particularly hackerish and gratifies one's intellectual curiosity? As it stands, this story is little more than "large underground aquifers exist" which is unlikely to gratify anyone's intellectual curiosity any more than "large deposits of coal exist". If finding this aquifer was accomplished via innovative new technology, let's see the story on that.
How about a discussion on Alain Gachet's WATEX publications which I understand to be the technological basis that enabled this find:
Ultimately, he's a hypocrite for being here to dole out sarcasm rather than actually working on resolving the plight of dying African children that he implies outweighs others' petty concerns.
I think there's a very good reason why pg and the editors actively curate HN (eg: blocking certain sites from submission) and don't let democracy do its thing: it doesn't stand a chance against Eternal September.
(Besides which: those publications, like this story, aren't all that interesting from an intellectually gratifying perspective.)
Cmon, you can't really expect an audience base that is probably mostly introverted and cynical to actually find joy in reading about a positive find in a third world country could you? In all seriousness though, I think this can be well developed if it isn't exploited by privatization. Since, ya know, most things that would be greatly beneficial to developing countries usually are.
There's a difference between caring about something and thinking it's intellectually stimulating. There's no need to insult people because they think HN is a bad place to post good news that has no takeaway value.
(I feel dirty for using the word 'takeaway' but I can't think of anything that fits better to mean an overly-broad version of 'learning'.)
I would like to voice my support of this question. There are plenty of other places for this news, but few places for computer science stories. Perhaps www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/ ?
You're ignoring the 'think it's important that the point is raised' factor. If there was a user-visible flagging mechanism, then a hate-to-be-that-guy would use it and never feel any urge to make an annoying post, win-win. I strongly doubt that most people claiming to 'hate to be that guy' are lying.
I do realize that, which is why I said 'user-visible'. Flagging as HN currently has it can be used for moderation purposes, and for downvotes in extreme situations. But a user-visible flag would provide a warning to users that an article is fluff or otherwise problematic, and possibly attract more discriminating attention.
