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Queen Elizabeth II has died

bbc.com

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Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died

#761

Post by 93po »

2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #716

I gotta admit that it is a bit weird to see british royalty being so heavily privileged that they even get special moderation treatment here on HN to protect them (?) from any negativity, or rather stop negativity about them. I'm not keen on the idea of using this submission to flame the Queen, I obviously agree with the general rule of avoiding flamebait, what I mean is that other HN submissions on the deaths of peo…

I love hating on moderation and I'm always ready to be critical of it, and of dang, if it's warranted. But I will say "monarchy is bad" comments are boring and don't lead to interesting discussion. There's a million other places to express that if you want.

Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died

#762

Post by dang »

2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #716

I gotta admit that it is a bit weird to see british royalty being so heavily privileged that they even get special moderation treatment here on HN to protect them (?) from any negativity, or rather stop negativity about them. I'm not keen on the idea of using this submission to flame the Queen, I obviously agree with the general rule of avoiding flamebait, what I mean is that other HN submissions on the deaths of peo…

It wasn't really special moderation treatment, though I understand why it looks like that way now.

It was because, when the thread was getting going, it flooded with crap comments (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769222, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769043). I decided to come down hard on those to try to ward off a shitshow. It would have been the same in any thread that was filling up that way, but which we weren't going to downweight off the front page. And we weren't going to do that because (a) the story was on-topic, and (b) it's such a big story that we couldn't get rid of it if we wanted to—people would just repost it until one got past us.

I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 at the top of the thread as a bulwark against the crap comments. That's also standard moderation. At some point, though, the thread started to fill with plenty of more substantive comments and then it looked to people like I was taking a side on the royalist question. Nothing was further from my mind.

It took me a long time to figure this out, probably because after 4 hours of doing nothing but refreshing this page and posting moderation scoldings, my brain was fried. Eventually I got it and the fix was simply to unpin https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 from the top and demote it as offtopic. That seems to have calmed things down (except maybe for https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=theirishrover).

Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died

#764

Post by handoflixue »

dctoedt wrote: post #651

From the NY Times: "Her personal behavior, unlike that of most of her family, was beyond reproach, never tainted by even the remotest hint of scandal. Elizabeth offered her subjects a mirror of the high moral standards that many might aspire to but most generally fail to attain." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/world/europe/queen-elizab...

I'm not saying she was a bad person, just that this praise is obviously ridiculously over-wrought. You simply can't reign as Queen of England for 70 years "without even the remotest hint of scandal"

Just last year there was the Guardian investigation that suggested she was trying to hide the true extent of her wealth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-que... (I've seen other sources disputing it, but one can't argue that this is at least a hint of scandal)

Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died

#766

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

dang wrote: post #762
2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #716

I gotta admit that it is a bit weird to see british royalty being so heavily privileged that they even get special moderation treatment here on HN to protect them (?) from any negativity, or rather stop negativity about them. I'm not keen on the idea of using this submission to flame the Queen, I obviously agree with the general rule of avoiding flamebait, what I mean is that other HN submissions on the deaths of peo…

It wasn't really special moderation treatment, though I understand why it looks like that way now. It was because, when the thread was getting going, it flooded with crap comments (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769222 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769043 ). I decided to come down hard on those to try to ward off a shitshow. It would have been the same in any thread that was filling up that wa…

Thanks for replying, this certainly lends me some context I was missing before.

Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died

#767

Post by DubiousPusher »

saberience wrote: post #71

It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all…

I would respectfully submit that this is perhaps the product of conditioning.

Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died

#768

Post by cgrealy »

jmyeet wrote: post #153

Some view the monarchy as anachronistic. Of course there's merit to that argument but the monarchy as an institution really doesn't cost that much and has worked in the British political system as really a check on abuse of government power. The Queen's consent in forming government is routine but it can be withheld. Australia had an example of this where the Governor General (the Queen's representative in the Austra…

> The American system of relying on centuries of tenuous interpretation of a fairly short document just isn't as much of an improvement as you think.

False dichotomy. Getting rid of the monarchy does not mean you have to follow the US model.

Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died

#769

Post by School-Cotton »

axiolite wrote: post #662
xtracto wrote: post #81

I remember clearly the time when Princess Diana died (1997). For me, it was THE moment when I understood the impact of the Internet. I was randomly browsing the web during the night in Mexico, and suddenly I started to see websites (I think Yahoo and MSN at that time) showing the news. I went to sleep without giving it too much attention. Next day, all the news in my country were mentioning the death as breaking news…

> My mind was blown over how I knew about this very important event the night before Mexico TV broke the news. I've had the opposite experience. It's clear that real-time news is detrimental, and it's better for reporting to wait a bit for facts to come in and analysis to be done. Early reporting is vague, light on facts, disjointed, facts are hedged, etc. It's really quite worthless.

Your parent comment never claimed that real-time news was a good or bad thing.

Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died

#770

Post by Symbiote »

madamelic wrote: post #307
g42gregory wrote: post #177

I really feel that Charles should at least consider passing on the Crown to his son William. William and Kate are immensely popular. It would be a good thing for Great Britain, British people as well as for the Royal Family. Charles and Camilla are the opposite in terms of respect and popularity to William and Kate, as far as I understand. If Charles does that, he would write himself into the annals of British histor…

Not to mention the actual cost. I believe it is in the tens of billions when a monarch dies (changes of money, ceremonies, etc). Dude is in his 70s. Save your country a bit of money unless you want to foot the bill for maybe 10 years of being King.

Coins aren't changed. New ones will have Charles on, but the existing ones will remain in circulation until they wear out.
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