[plessthanpt05]

Trump saying him and Melania testing positive for the Coronavirus four weeks out from the presidential election is huge news. This story is not about politics (i.e. about a political issue), it is about a political/world leader and his wife.

Edit: So "TV news" covering the newest iPhone release would probably be off-topic too then based on this reasoning, but this seems to reliably hit the front page of HN everytime Apple does so. Apologies for the bad example.

[tastroder]

Which is, given that all of them seem to have been submitted on /newest, pretty clear "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." territory (political or not). It's off topic and the comments wouldn't add anything you would not get from your Facebook/Twitter/news site comments section bubble, instead it would just create a mega-thread of political rants and general toxicity.

[troydavis]

> Edit: So "TV news" covering the newest iPhone release would probably be off-topic too then based on this reasoning, but this seems to reliably hit the front page of HN everytime Apple does so.

Consider that HN is all about intellectual curiosity. Imagine that the hostname is intellectualcuriosity.ycombinator.com rather than news. Debating product design is more likely to yield interesting thoughts/comments and much less likely to lead to a useless flame war.

The newsworthiness of a submission - which is huge in this case, as you noted - is a relatively minor factor for whether something is a good fit.

[addicted]

HN’s got to be a pretty intellectually barren place if it cannot find anything to drive intellectual curiosity in what is a pretty unprecedented event.

When was the last time a sitting US President contracted a deadly disease with no know cure?

And happened to be within spitting (and therefore contagion) distance of the other Presidential candidate who, if he contracted the disease was also at great risk?

And it’s likely the VP is also at risk.

You have a situation where the President and the VP may be incapacitated. You may have a situation where the presidential candidates for both the major parties may have to drop out of the elections.

And that’s just my immediate thoughts about unprecedented possibilities.

[howlgarnish]

There are two sides to intellectual curiosity at HN: the article itself, and the opinions of the HN commentariat. In this case, I agree that the news itself isn't particularly intellectually gratifying, but this is seismically important news with many potential non-obvious ramifications, and I would be quite interesting in seeing those HN opinions that aren't just "lol die pumpkin".

For comparison, the HN story announcing that Trump was chosen as president-elect had 1800 upvotes and 2200 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907201

[onecommentman]

Currently the subreddit Coronavirus for general COVID news has a post with the information and over 3000 comments. The subreddit COVID-19, dedicated to the science and medicine side of things with tight moderation, has no posting. There is current precedent for keeping it out. Personally, I choose to visit the COVID-19 subreddit for the same reasons I visit HN.

[3131s]

You will see how much longer your bubble will last if the next few months play out wrong.

[troydavis]

I'd appreciate if you could skim https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The things that let HN work at this scale are "Be kind. Don't be snarky." and "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

While it's always possible that HN, or some HN readers, or just yours truly are in a bubble, it's not a good-faith interpretation of my comment. Heck, I don't think it's even a neutral interpretation :-) And bubble or not, a one-line "zinger" regresses the conversation.

[detaro]

> This story is not about politics (i.e. about a political issue), it is about a political leader and his wife.

That's worse. Political issues as at least typically have different perspectives to discuss, people-facts do not. This doesn't need to be on the front page.

[plessthanpt05]

> Political issues as at least typically have different perspectives to discuss, people-facts do not.

If people-facts do not have different perspectives to discuss, then why would the death of someone (regardless of who they are) be relevant to HN (even though they are routinely on the frontpage)? Or as user "bdcravens" wrote above, then "Articles about Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning would also be subject to those rules", but are also routinely on the frontpage.

[detaro]

Typically, the death is not the thing being discussed, but the death is taken as a point to discuss/share stories about/... the person - and not every death is discussed here. Whereas the current US president already comes up in discussions all the time.

[rvz]

Well I recall the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had Covid-19 and was in hospital and on HN it was flagged. It may have been 'news' but it was against the guidelines. This is no different.

The guidelines probably needs to be changed here then.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "it is about a political/world leader and his wife"

Boris Johnson's bout with COVID-19 didn't make the HN front page despite being headline news elsewhere. Why would this be different?