| I'm inclined to agree. I don't think there's anything wrong with the death of someone like Steve Jobs taking up room on the front page of HackerNews. Look at the the current top 5 stories: Steve Jobs has passed away. (apple.com): 2393 points, 282 comments Apple RIP Logo design (jmak.tumblr.com): 265 points, 16 comments Steve Jobs has died (marketwatch.com): 776 points, 59 comments The Steve Jobs I Knew (allthingsd.com): 343 points, 8 comments President Obama on Steve Jobs (whitehouse.gov): 361 points, 38 comments Completely reasonable. Such attention for someone who was important to the tech industry as he was is precisely what I'd expect from a place like HN. A bit high on the points : comments ratio, but this isn't exactly a story that will lead to long drawn-out flame war (at least I'd hope not), so that too is understandable. But it steadily declines from there: at the time of writing, the remaining 25 Jobs stories on the front page have 116 comments combined. If no one has anything interesting to say about these stories, then it doesn't seem like a far-fetched interpretation that there's nothing interesting in them, either, so why are they being upvoted? |