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.
But specifically saying not to comment negatively while allowing positive comments on what is clearly a hotly contested issue is ridiculous.
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...
I am kind of curious about what this means exactly. Is any criticism of the monarchy off limits? Is the purpose of this thread for people to air their positive thoughts about this lady?
For example, I find non-British people that are genuinely sad about her passing to be pretty bizarre. It’s a fascinating event to look at how we tend to form parasocial relationships with carefully curated depictions of people.
It’s even more bizarre when we make actual rules to enforce orthodoxy and stifle criticism of parasocial relationships with carefully curated depictions of people.
This insistence on an arbitrary standard of decorum and the compulsion to play out a socially-prescribed bit of theater is pretty odd. Queen Elizabeth was paradoxically both not powerful enough to warrant lumping her in with British failings and at the same time so powerful that we are compelled to speak highly of her.
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.
Perhaps I should take bit out as it obviously wasn't clear enough.
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
There are unwritten social contracts in play here - which get weaker with time.
Criticizing the oppression of colonies (under the eyes of the crown) is only allowed - sometime later.
(Edit: that first sentence is really a template instantiation. When I post like this, it's never for or against <T>. It's always just about internet comments. People who are against <T> (or for it) often react like we're for <T> (or against it), but this is an illusion. It could quickly be cured by grokking the template, since at that level all these posts are entirely the same.)
It may not make so much sense now, but this thread was filling with the worst sort of dumb flamebait when it got started. That it isn't so now is because I've spent the last 3 hours refreshing the page and meticulously moderating it. If some of my comments are a little dyspeptic, that's because dealing with tedious comments is tedious, and I sort of pep myself up by letting loose a bit. Not the finest of practices but esprit de corps is also a need.
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.
I was not making a case for royalism! just a case against tedious internet battles, and boy is monarchism one of those. (I mean, "Good riddance. The world is rid of a horrible person who has done horrible things" - ? Good grief. At least give us something amusing.) (that was a random example I just ran across)
More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818 if anyone cares.
You use words like "odd" and "bizarre" to describe many people's reactions to the QE's passing...
I humbly suggest that it's it is simply that you don't understand a certain perspective here. That's totally fine -- completely fine -- because there's no reason to expect we all could or should share the same perspective on this.
I humbly also suggest that, while there are certainly many criticism that could (and should, probably) be leveled in good reason against monarchies in general, and perhaps this monarchy in particular, today is maybe not the right day to do it.
Today a lady who was very meaningful to many people has passed. Why not let them grieve?
Imagine someone important to you died today. They surely weren't perfect, but is today the day to harp on their negatives? The monarchy has been around for centuries. If your criticisms have any merit, they will still have impact a few days from now.
Anyway, whether you're lucky enough that no one important to you has died (yet) or because you don't have that sensitivity, let me assure you: today isn't the day to pursue your criticisms of those that have passed today. Hang on to it for now andtell everyone about it later. If it's really something worthwhile, it will have legs later, too.
Obviously dang is free to moderate as he sees fit, but this attempt to rationalize bias as some philosophical ideal of fair high-quality moderation is worth criticizing. This all stems from the insistence that HN remain “politically neutral,” which is a mythical concept for comfortable people who want to be insulated from conversation that threatens their comfortable lives. Politically neutral is always politically defensive of the status quo, and moderation to that effect always ends up with threads like these that end up skewed in favor of the position deemed to be politically “neutral.”
I wanted to reach a broader audience with my phrasing so I didn't call that point out, but I completely agree.
My condolences to British people who held the Queen at high esteem. But frankly world is a bigger place than Britain and America. Not everyone from the British former colonies will appreciate the Queen. if they express the feelings about the monarchy in a respectful way; do you see an issue?
I believe I've answered your other question in a few places:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772419
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771874
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772067
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771818
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32770946
... as well as in the comment you're replying to (starting at "I'm not telling you guys to be royalists!"). If you read those comments and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Those of us who make the effort to understand the truth of world affairs will always be targeted by those who wish to mould the world to their view. Such is the nature of imperialism.
Elizabeth and her empire is STILL TODAY responsible for much, much suffering - at immense scale. This is a truly scary fact for those who live inside the propaganda bubble that protects them from knowing anything about the victims of the empire.
Is it not substantive to point this out?
The fact that the UK doesn't have the social capital to prosecute their known, actual war criminals - because they are factually protected by the crown - should be a clue of the malignant effect of the monarchy, in itself.
Pro-status-quo comments are inherently going to be less divisive because they don't challenge people, and seeing this thread full up of folks commenting on how personally meaningful the queen was to them without ever really being involved in their lives is a testament to that.
That said, I think it may also just go to show that's why royalism discussions shouldn't be the bread and butter of this community.
---
Thanks for the response by the way. I disagree with some things here but I also talk with a number of people from wildly different viewpoints. A true testament to y'alls work.
I should have said it differently because I gave the impression of being on one side when the truth is that I don't care; and qua moderator, I really don't care.