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A lot of people don't read the Hacker News Guidelines⁽¹⁾ before submitting and deserve to be flagged. Quoting (emphasis mine): Off-Topic: Most stories about p

by eddyg 2y ago

A lot of people don't read the Hacker News Guidelines⁽¹⁾ before submitting and deserve to be flagged. Quoting (emphasis mine): Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. ⁽¹⁾ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

nubinetwork 2y ago
You say that, but there was a big thread on Val Kilmer on the front page this morning...
- kubb 2y ago
  He died, I'm fine with making an exception for it.
  - milesrout 2y ago
    Why? He isn't relevant to HN at all. Is every celebrity death newsworthy on HN now?
    - kubb 2y ago
      Maybe he was significant to a lot of hackers. The death was also untimely, which reminds us to cherish the time we have. Many of us are in our 50s or 60s.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  This is not really mysterious or anything, though, right? They allow bending of the rules for stuff that is not likely to devolve into a big stupid political flame war, because, like, pick your battles. Also I’d expect there to be some annoying edge cases if they tried to ban that sort of discussion. I mean, Kilmer is not a tech person. But tech people die sometimes too. Arguably discussing their life as people is outside the scope of the site. Maybe we shouldn’t have had a conversation about how great a guy Mr. Moolenaar was and just discussed the technical aspects of his life’s work. But, come on, that’d not really be a human way of responding to somebody’s death, right? If we’re going to have these sort of lightly rule breaking threads, then I don’t think it is necessary to ask the mods to adjudicate exactly who’s technical enough to warrant one. It’s a fuzzy spectrum anyway, we have tech people, tech policy people, STEM outreach people, tech YouTube influencers, celebrities that played beloved nerd characters.
timeon 2y ago
> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon Maybe time will tell if it was actually OT.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >Maybe time will tell if it was actually OT. When that time comes, if it comes, then you'd be within the guidelines to post it. Preemptively posting it just in case it later becomes some new phenomenon is not ideal.

by eddyg 2y ago

nubinetwork 2y ago

You say that, but there was a big thread on Val Kilmer on the front page this morning...

kubb 2y ago
He died, I'm fine with making an exception for it.
- milesrout 2y ago
  Why? He isn't relevant to HN at all. Is every celebrity death newsworthy on HN now?
  - kubb 2y ago
    Maybe he was significant to a lot of hackers. The death was also untimely, which reminds us to cherish the time we have. Many of us are in our 50s or 60s.
bee_rider 2y ago
This is not really mysterious or anything, though, right? They allow bending of the rules for stuff that is not likely to devolve into a big stupid political flame war, because, like, pick your battles. Also I’d expect there to be some annoying edge cases if they tried to ban that sort of discussion. I mean, Kilmer is not a tech person. But tech people die sometimes too. Arguably discussing their life as people is outside the scope of the site. Maybe we shouldn’t have had a conversation about how great a guy Mr. Moolenaar was and just discussed the technical aspects of his life’s work. But, come on, that’d not really be a human way of responding to somebody’s death, right? If we’re going to have these sort of lightly rule breaking threads, then I don’t think it is necessary to ask the mods to adjudicate exactly who’s technical enough to warrant one. It’s a fuzzy spectrum anyway, we have tech people, tech policy people, STEM outreach people, tech YouTube influencers, celebrities that played beloved nerd characters.

timeon 2y ago

> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon Maybe time will tell if it was actually OT.

ziddoap 2y ago
>Maybe time will tell if it was actually OT. When that time comes, if it comes, then you'd be within the guidelines to post it. Preemptively posting it just in case it later becomes some new phenomenon is not ideal.