Technically you're correct in that, this site is a culmination of news that gets submitted and upvoted. However, eggbrain was quoting the Hacker News Guidelines

Technically you're correct in that, this site is a culmination of news that gets submitted and upvoted. However, eggbrain was quoting the Hacker News Guidelines [1], when he listed the Off-Topic line. I think that this story does fall within the off-topic category (even though it is popular, like you mentioned), because it is graphic content, which is probably a crime, and just senseless violence. [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html