EDIT Civility is important but it should not be confused for everyone having the same point of view on a topic. And censorship by "civility" causes people to not join discussions. When I come to HN I want a intelligent but lively discussion. However, some issues have reached such a consensus such that even well thought out opposing views put politely get heavily downvoted.
Imagine you were the caretaker of a public establishment like a school or business, and news broke of the passing of an eminent person who was deeply respected and admired by many of the people who frequent that establishment.
So you went and lowered the flag to half-mast, because that is the customary and respectful thing to do. And whilst most people appreciated the gesture and felt comforted by the shared sense of mourning and respect for the deceased person, a small minority erupted into a noisy debate about how appropriate it was to lower the flag, and whether someone else was more worthy of having the flag lowered in their honour, etc.
If you can imagine this scenario in real life, you can understand how dang feels when this kind of argument erupts on a bereavement thread on a site he runs and cares so deeply about cultivating as a pleasant site to visit.
He can't be the one to call people out for being insensitive, but he can at least say "Thank you" to someone who does, and who in doing so, gives him some much-needed reassurance about the level of emotional intelligence around this place.
Discussions about the merits of customs and policies on the site are fair enough, but if we're to be as humane and compassionate online as we would try to be offline, the time and place of the mourning and honouring of a just-deceased person is not the right time and place.
Just reverse that situation and imagine that you are a member of a public establishment and that when certain people you particularly respect pass that public establishment does not follow its usual customs.
That isn't what's happened here.
Seriously, civil behaviour around a bereavement is just not that hard.
Respectfully, I won't be commenting further on this thread.
Meta-discussion of the black bar is intellectually uninteresting at best. Off topic in the middle. And disrespectful of people's grief at worst. The least of these is reason enough to downvote.
You don't have to have the same point of view on this topic, just don't take a discussion of a recently dead person being officially mourned by the site owner as an opportunity to criticize that.
If this "censorship" (which is far from it) causes people who are going to argue over mourning to not join the discussion, then mission accomplished.
If I squint, I guess I can see that use of the word "civilized" as a bit aggressive, but really I think Mike was being hyperbolic for effect in his later description.