From a moderating standpoint, one of the obvious facts concerning this thread is that the subject is a major news event. As such it attracts a very high level of interest from all quarters. Anybody with any insight into aviation realises that when a tragic event such as this occurs, the search for the cause takes far more time than the normal "shelf life" of a newsworthy item, which is obviously frustrating and is partially satisfied by all spectrums of speculation from the wildly ignorant, through the uninformed, to the informed, to the guesswork and collateral knowledge of those with some expertise in the various arenas.
On television news channels, the event draws an increasingly large audience who are not held by a 3 minute report and the statement that further accurate information may slowly come to the fore in a few days or weeks or months. They (we) tune in for the up to the minute pictures, commentary, speculation, eyewitness reports, "expert" comment. Most of the time it is perfectly obvious that those reporting have little information but are nevertheless required to "keep talking, you are live on air" because that is what is drawing and holding the audience. That is the nature of that media.
Here this is an open site normally populated and primarilly targeted at Pilots and other aviation professionals. However it isn't and never has been the exclusive domain of those groups and as such draws interest from anybody with a contribution, question, comment, observation, opinion, statement, or simply non contributory perusal of the threads. The nature of this media (internet) of accessible discussion forums, is that anybody can take part, and of course anybody does. This site has a high number of moderators assigned to various forums to trim away the wilder excesses that are often seen on other popular open sites, however the format still attempts to encourage a wide cross section of contribution from a similarly wide cross section of interested contibutors.
This particular event and single thread, at its current stage of newsworthiness is drawing between 1000 and 2000 on line readers for most of the day. In turn this is attracting an unusually high level of contribution from not only the regular contributors, but also a high proportion of new and infrequent subscribers. The result is that a lot of moderation is being applied to the subject, not to curtail the discussion, speculation or comment, but to stop the thread being an even more unwieldly mess of "RIP, condolences, thoughts are with...." comments. The unmoderated script is a much longer tome of all the usual breathless excitement, willy waving, pointless nonsense, spelling police, tantrums, and other non relevant detrius.
whilst trying to remain as impartial as possible, we also roll our eyes at some of the posts we still allow to remain in the thread. That is a case of not trying to censor or drive opinion whilst still trying to balance a need to prevent unnecessary repetition and maintain the rules of conduct that apply elsewhere on the site. At the moment this thread is very busy, but it will settle down to normal levels of discussion and moderation in due course.