All the HN obituaries I've seen did something related to computing, science, business, startups, etc. like the rest of the news. Did Kobe do anything in those areas?
There's plenty of other posts about artists, authors, musicians and actors passing away that weren't flagged. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal... https://hn.algolia.com/?q=has+died
I'm not saying Terry Jones obituaries should have been wiped too. I'm saying there's a weird editorial double standard here.
The name of one of the most prolific programming languages in the world, Python, is because of Terry Jones. That was his contribution and why he was relevant.
The reason it was “relevant” is simply because there’s more Monty Python fans on here than basketball fans. Which is fine if we’re talking purely about +votes but it doesn’t justify flagging a submission.
So there's some contributions to history, depending on how you value it.