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[return to "Queen Elizabeth II has died"]
1. dang+Bh[view] [source] 2022-09-08 18:33:10
>>xd+(OP)
All: please don't post flamebait, including ranting against monarchy or railing against "the nobility" like it's 1770. Such reflexive comments are not on topic here. We want curious conversation. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

This story is on topic because it's a major historical event and history has always been on topic here. If it doesn't produce an intellectually curious response in you, you're welcome to find something else that does—there are plenty of other things to read—but in that case please refrain from posting.

Positive-empty comments aren't substantive either, but as pg pointed out way back when HN was getting started (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html), those are benign. The comments we need to avoid are the malignant ones.

Edit: by positive-empty I just meant comments like these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32770030

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769786

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769037

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769019

I'm not telling you guys to be royalists! I'm just asking you not to post crap comments, which this thread was filled with when I first saw it. We don't care what you're for or against, we just care about people using HN as intended.

Edit 2: I think the problem is that this comment has outlived its usefulness at the top of the thread because the bottom of the barrel comments have mostly been moderated away, whether by user flags or by us. I'm going to unpin this and mark it offtopic now. Please don't post any more bottom-of-barrel comments!—and if you see some, please flag them.

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2. marric+jr[view] [source] 2022-09-08 19:10:28
>>dang+Bh
> please don't post flamebait, including ranting against monarchy or railing against "the nobility" like it's 1770

> Positive-empty comments aren't substantive either, but as pg pointed out way back when HN was getting started (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html), those are benign

Pro status-quo bias. Monarchy isn't as relevant as it used to be but trusting the judgment and leadership of the elite is as relevant as ever and allowing positive-empty comments just reinforces that belief here. I guess that's just the sort of bias HN is ok with.

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3. istjoh+oE[view] [source] 2022-09-08 20:07:34
>>marric+jr
The monarchy is still politically relevant in the UK[1]. But it seems dang prefers to have pages of saccharine platitudes than allow any discussion of the desirability of monarchy in the modern world or any critical discussion of the Queen's legacy. Curiosity is only encouraged if it doesn't put wealth and power under it's microscope. Then it becomes tedious.

As I wrote here three years ago[1]:

> Indignation isn't shallow or boring, it's the driving force behind social progress. Indeed, lack of indignation indicates either the inability to imagine a better world or perhaps the natural satisfaction with the status quo of someone who finds themself sitting on the upper rungs of society as currently structured. The latter no doubt describes many of us here.

Indignation isn't the arch-enemy of intellectual curiosity; apathy and bovine conformity are. This status-quo bias is what you would expect of a forum run for the benefit of a Silicon Valley for-profit institution, but it's still disappointing.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-roy...

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21831016

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4. youngt+qH[view] [source] 2022-09-08 20:18:50
>>istjoh+oE
This!

It might be an interesting historical event for people who don’t live in the UK

But some of us have to live with this… a family that have got immensely rich from being head of state, a family that have interfered in laws to their advantage, a family that we have no choice over whether they continue to be the head of state

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