Sorry, but I already found out that Russert was dead from a dozen different news sources.
Also, he was never "fair" to both sides of the aisle. Sometimes he was in attack mode, sometimes he would switch to kid-gloves mode (I remember him giving a particularly easy interview to Mike Huckabee on the eve of the Iowa primary, and that is a man with a LOT of "interesting" issues to talk about). Maybe he was special in the world of journalists because he actually had an attack mode. But let him be praised for what he was, and not an idealized vision of what he never was.
"But let him be praised for what he was, and not an idealized vision of what he never was."
I just read Speaker for the Dead again--I hadn't picked it back up again since high school--and I think Card argues we kill the dead all over again when we idealize them instead of confronting who they really were. An extreme thesis, but one worth considering.
I don't have a problem with this one. It's mainstream news, but it's mainstream news that's actually relevant to people, as opposed to, say, celebrity gossip. It has no special relevance to hackers, but it's still just as relevant to us as to anyone else. Stories of this magnitude come up in the media maybe once a month. Having a single post about them show up on news.yc isn't going to drown out the signal.
This: "It has no special relevance to hackers" is the key. We have general news sites for general news. I'm sure we all know how to get there. Nobody is going to be informed for the first time that Tim Russert has died by coming here. So now you have to ask yourself, what does it add to the conversation?
This is not a general news aggregator, we have those in spades, and the chances are that we all know where to find them. It's disheartening that this has gotten so many upvotes.
news.yc is not just a news aggregator. It's also a community, one which is populated by people whose opinions I value more than those on general news aggregators. I might not be reading about Tim Russert's death for the first time, but I might still read something insightful about it that I wouldn't have seen elsewhere. You could fill the front page with articles about knitting, and if you could still get the same group of people to hang around, it would be still be more interesting than a typical day on Digg.
Upmodded this, downmodded its parent. Bottom line is that we read other feeds to learn about general news, and expect a higher SNR on this site, restricted to relevant domains. Downmods != disagree is correct, but I would not want to inhibit any downmod that improves the SNR and preserves the quality of a great news forum.
Clinton's concession was not simply damaging because it wasn't hacker news--stories of that nature threaten hacker news as a whole.
(1) A story about Clinton's concession contains no information content. Everyone at all tracking politics knew it was coming, and anyone who cared about when it happened could have predicted the timing reasonably well in advance. Tim Russert dying is a story with no hacker news content, but it is at least some information--I sincerely doubt anyone was predicting Russert's imminent demise.
(2) A story about Clinton conceding is divisive to the community. It brings up a topic of discussion unrelated to the topic that brings this community together, and, given the tendency of some people to downvote in order to indicate disagreement, ultimately increases the homogeneity of the viewpoints expressed here. Most people do not find Russert's death nearly as divisive. Regardless of what you think of the quality of Russert's interviews, historical trends tend to indicate that he will be replaced by someone worse at it.
(3) A story about Clinton's concession reminds everyone of how Reddit came to be what it is. This sort of story is relatively benign in this respect.
(4) The story about Clinton conceding--if it had been popular--brings the baggage of continual political stories in its wake. If every time a major media figure dies there is a single HN story about it, HN is not incredibly damaged by this.
No. It was downvoted because it contributed nothing to the discussion. Saying 'thanks for your opposing view' is as useless as saying 'I agree' and nothing else.
Sorry, but I already found out that Russert was dead from a dozen different news sources.
Also, he was never "fair" to both sides of the aisle. Sometimes he was in attack mode, sometimes he would switch to kid-gloves mode (I remember him giving a particularly easy interview to Mike Huckabee on the eve of the Iowa primary, and that is a man with a LOT of "interesting" issues to talk about). Maybe he was special in the world of journalists because he actually had an attack mode. But let him be praised for what he was, and not an idealized vision of what he never was.