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Comment by pbateman | Hacker News Reader

Calling a gentle suggestion from the HN community to make a minor change to mourn one of our members "very offensive" is a bizarre overreaction.

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Sure, as long as it's gentle. I just don't want a discussion on why it is wrong to not make the bar black or what not. And as I said, I see this in a long tradition of making people do stuff because somebody died, which I don't like. It's all peachy as long as people comply, but if they don't, suddenly they might be labeled as cold hearted, sociopathic or whatever. Why not just let it be an individual thing?

As somebody else pointed out, PG is probably still asleep and will probably black the bar anyway. I don't think he needs a reminder. Also, I know nothing about his personal feelings towards Aaron.

1) It pretty obviously is gentle. In the most extreme scenario pg is bullied into briefly making a minor change to the CSS.

2) HN is a community site, which exists and thrives largely because of the community. I can't see anything wrong with members of said community making suggestions on occasion, particularly on occasions like this.

3) People are far too quick to take offence these days, particularly on the internet. IMHO the world would be a better place if these people were instructed to get over it rather than pandered to.

4) Finally PG is free to say no and I for one will not judge him ill for it.

I didn't take offense in the sense of "if you do this I'll find you and beat you up". It was just my lack of English skills. What I mean is I don't like it. Obviously nobody will notice if I join in demonstrative mourning or not over the internet, so no real harm is done. I also don't mind a black bar on HN - I find this event very sad myself.

I upvoted you because I think it is wrong to downvote something you don't agree with but which is otherwise a) Not spam b) Not offensive c) Not useless

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