I think we're discussing different things. I agree that plenty of discussion tends to touch on those subjects, and in the 2020s, it seems increasingly difficult

I think we're discussing different things. I agree that plenty of discussion tends to touch on those subjects, and in the 2020s, it seems increasingly difficult to separate them from many aspects of our lives. But those discussions are in a very literal sense exceptions to the rules based on their relevance to the tech community. And mentioning the cause of death was not forbidden. The initial post about Bob Lee was split off into two, so one could remain focused on remembering Bob for who he was [0], and the other could explore the surrounding circumstances [1]. With that said, the site guidelines are pretty clear: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity. So this will often boil down to the framing. If the title is tinged with political implications, that's quite a bit different than mentioning the cause of death. The circumstances surrounding Bob Lee's death are relevant to quite a few readers here, and so there was a discussion about it. But a default assessment of any given submission if weighed against the guidelines should assume that such content is off-topic, unless there's a reason to believe otherwise (as there was in this and cases like the one you cited that are close to the tech community). Even with that separation, there was quite a bit of discussion that was clearly far outside of the guidelines in that thread. - [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341 - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899