How to handle multiple cases dealing with the same problem?

I was wondering - how do other people approach having a big IT issue reported by many users? Say I have problem X and 25 users create a case. What I do now is the following. I don't want it so those 25 cases are shown together with my other cases. That would clutter things up. I still want to be aware of the problem though.

I've tried merging all cases. When I do that it seems it's only the user in the parent case that gets emails about what happens in the case. I can put the other people in the "E-mail Id(s) To Notify" field but that's very time consuming.

I've also tried creating a general case about a problem, and then linking the other cases to it. It seems the links are removed once the cases are closed.

I'm curious to know how other people handle this?