The nice thing about HN-history links like this, is newer people get to learn about the community around HN a bit more and people's attitudes toward it, which I think makes people more respectful of the site and rules and fellow users. So I think posting stories like this one and the comments that come with it help solve the problem we're talking about here, which is at least partly an Eternal September kind of thing.
One other thing they might be able to do to improve discussion/post quality is to increase friction for posting and commenting, but that could understandably harm the site, too, and I figure it's been considered.