It sounds like this is probably the reason because I started seeing issues around 10/13 and 0.11.1 came out 10/15. I remember seeing people recommending changing minrelaytxfee when the reddit post came out.
This really needs to be addressed because it is breaking the core functionality of bitcoin. We can argue about big blocks and txfees but if it becomes impossible to determine what minimum criteria is necessary to propagate a transaction then bitcoin becomes useless. At the bare minimum we need a mechanism to determine what fee is necessary to propagate a transaction. Forcing users to guess with real money does not make for a robust or useable system.
I would argue that the core functionality of bitcoin is not for micro transactions, but that is for a different discussion.
The mechanism for determining the fee necessary to propagate should be the same mechanism for determining the fee for a transaction to confirm. If it will confirm, it will propagate. You should really be creating transactions with a decent fee, I have been sending them with a minimum fee of 0.0001, if not higher. There are a variety of tools that analyze recent transactions to estimate the best fee. Bitcoin core has its own fee estimation built in, and a site I have been using which is quite helpful is
http://www.cointape.com/.
I feel it is somewhat reckless the way these current changes were introduced. I know some people do not want to see Bitcoin used for micro-transactions but there is no way the next 7 billion users will come online without them. The services that depend on micro-transactions will simply move to a new alt and that is what will become the defacto standard for onboarding new users.
You may think it is reckless, but it is in fact not. Every change in Bitcoin Core is discussed on the mailing list, in IRC, or on the github, if not all of them. You can read the discussion specifically for bumping the default here:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6793. Also, this change is considered a temporary measure, not a permanent one. There is a better solution being worked on for 0.12 but that is not ready for a release yet. This change will probably be reverted in the new release.