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.
> 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.
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...
This is a very common criticism when one happens to disagree with the target of some positivity. Sometimes it's a reasonable criticism, but usually it's an oversimplification we allow ourselves to indulge in. Positivity can have intrinsic value even in the absence of some accompanying objective substance.
On the other hand, and similarly to my first point, I agree that indignation too is not inherently value-less. However, there are miles between useful indignation and snarky tangents.
That being said, an important person died I can understand that it's generally not good style to start with the negative comments right away.