Bonnie Tyler has died
61–70 of 138 posts
Re: Bonnie Tyler has died
#62[flagged]
There, got my upvote.
Re: Bonnie Tyler has died
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how it works. If upvotes alone mattered, HN would quickly degenerate into Reddit. The bar is whether "good hackers" would find this interesting. Death notices of famous artists are the definition of off-topic: "most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." If normies care…
I do think HN should have an obit: category and filter them out the main page. It's one thing to have obits for people who wouldn't be covered by regular news, but "75 year old celebrity dies" is not any kind of new phenomenon. It generates a decent amount of upvotes and discussion based on name recognition and nostalgia, but every thread is essentially the same, "Oh, that's sad, I liked their work, .".
Nobody forced you to click on the article or jump into the comment section, did they?
Re: Bonnie Tyler has died
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Death notices of famous artists are regularly on HN. If people upvote it, it should be worthy.
That's not how it works. If upvotes alone mattered, HN would quickly degenerate into Reddit. The bar is whether "good hackers" would find this interesting. Death notices of famous artists are the definition of off-topic: "most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." If normies care…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48614633
> Anything that gratifies intellectual curiosity is on topic for HN! - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html That doesn't mean it has to gratify your curiosity or mine - no single article can do that for everyone. But it's clear that that's what makes the article on topic.
> One other aspect: the best HN submissions are the ones that are most uncorrelated with anything else that's gotten attention recently - or, as I used to put it, can't be predicted from any existing sequence
There is a "hide" link for threads not of interest, I strongly encourage it's use to optimize your forum participation experience; if this forum is not to your liking, there are others potentially more suited to what you desire.
> I flag this and every such thread I come across. If Hacker News is going to be consistent in its espoused principles, this is non-technical content and thus not welcome. If that standard applies to far more substantive stories regardless of the quality of conversation they produce, it must apply here as well.
Mods can turn off flag capabilities per account, keep this in mind. You won't know if your flags are effective or not.
Re: Bonnie Tyler has died
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how it works. If upvotes alone mattered, HN would quickly degenerate into Reddit. The bar is whether "good hackers" would find this interesting. Death notices of famous artists are the definition of off-topic: "most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." If normies care…
> If upvotes alone mattered I did not say upvotes alone matter, but they should be the final say after all other mechanisms. > The bar is whether "good hackers" would find this interesting. If this were true, the majority of frontpage-entries would have to be removed. > "most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities,[..]If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." I guess the notable po…
>but they should be the final say after all other mechanisms
They shouldn't be, and they aren't. The mods make the final decision and they will work against the consensus when they disagree with it. This is a very aggressively curated community.
>If this were true, the majority of frontpage-entries would have to be removed.
Maybe the majority of frontpage entries should be removed. Maybe the "HN is turning into Reddit" people are finally correct. But that is literally what the guidelines say. On topic - "Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Off topic - everything else, with the minor exception of "some new and interesting phenomenon" to gratify that intellectual curiosity.
I'm sorry but there is nothing new or interesting about the death of celebrities, and nothing about it to gratify intellectual curiosity. Their lives, maybe, but if someone wasn't worth discussing on Hacker News in life, they shouldn't be worth discussing post mortem.
>The exception seems to be always news which are so important or dramatic that they are still not removed, and leaving the final decision to the upvotes.
The final decision, in that case, is entirely up to the moderators. Threads with plenty of upvotes get flagged and stay flagged all the time.
>Despite being called hacker news, reality is not binary and rules should not be handled like that.
Maybe. But if there are grey areas, this doesn't seem like one of them. I don't see why far more substantive stories so often get flagged for "politics" or being "non-technical" even when they involve a pile of dead bodies, or why we police humor and emotion like signs of cancer, but we get to wallow in the nostalgia of every dead celebrity that comes along.
Re: Bonnie Tyler has died
#66This broke my heart:
> Despite coming from a big, musical family, Tyler and Sullivan never had children.
> I absolutely adore children.
> I did have a miscarriage when I was 40, I left it too late, you know?
I feel like, if you get into that situation, try to adopt or become a foster parent.
Re: Bonnie Tyler has died
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how it works. If upvotes alone mattered, HN would quickly degenerate into Reddit. The bar is whether "good hackers" would find this interesting. Death notices of famous artists are the definition of off-topic: "most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." If normies care…
[flagged]
You seem to be new here, welcome to Hacker News.
Everyone is in charge of what you should find interesting and everyone will make it your problem.
Re: Bonnie Tyler has died
#68[flagged]
Next total eclipse, 2026-08-12.
Total: Greenland, Iceland, Spain, Northeastern Portugal
Partial: Northern North America, Europe, West Africa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_...
Re: Bonnie Tyler has died
#69[flagged]
Nah, occassional non tech stuff is very welcome. It’s interesting to see HN’s perspective on other things
Re: Bonnie Tyler has died
#70Literal music video of Total Eclipse, one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsgWUq0fdKk RIP Ms Tyler, you will be missed
That is so great. My wife and i love to annoy our teenage kids by getting Alexa to play this song and then singing along very dramatically haha.
How old are you, for curiosities sake? I'm born early 90s, fondly remembering me and a friend shaming all the rest of our group by singing this song (dramatically as well) as a duet whenever we were in (already loud) public spaces.