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Comment by jessriedel | Hacker News Reader

Not a big deal, but I'm not sure HN is the best place for this stuff. None of us were at risk not hearing about this from other sources (unless you only read HN, in which case maybe that's what you're going for). I tentatively suggest HN should only cover deaths of famous people when they have a direct connection to the tech community (e.g., Steve Jobs) or when the person had important intellectual contributions that can be discussed. This isn't a good place for pure nostalgia or entertainment news.

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I still value the comments here more than anywhere else on the internet honestly. So i don't really mind the occasional off-topic post.

I'm sympathetic to this argument insofar as the seemingly-off-topic post can generate intellectually (rather than just emotionally) stimulating comments. That's why a small number of well-written politics articles should be here. Seems a lot less likely for celebrity deaths. You can never completely predict that in advance, but you have to draw a line somewhere.

I wish HN would implent tags so we could just filter out stuff like this. I mean, it seems a bit disrespectful to flag it, but it is clearly off-topic. Sadly, so is much of the content on HN these days, especially at weekends.

I've upvoted the Reddit thread and am going to just leave this un-voted because I agree it simply doesn't belong here. Sad though the news is, as someone who grew up watching Moore's Bond films.

Not to disrespect Moore — the man is a legend in my opinion, and he'll be sorely missed — but I tend to agree.

I understand the desire to see tech related stories, but HN is not a newspaper with an editorial staff. If the community doesn’t think this is a topic worth discussing, it will not bubble up. If you are seeing it on the front page, it’s likely of interest to this community.

Actually, HN has an excellent editorial staff in the form of moderators who routinely remove, or reduce visibility of, highly-voted content for not complying with site guidelines.

I agree but it still on front page. We gotta ask ourselves why.

What about the submarine Lotus Espirit?

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