HN Explorer

Ask HN: Should HN black bar become community driven?

9 points by sirobg ↗ HN
With recent Jim Simons passing, I noticed some comments were asking @dang to display the black bar in his memory.

I then looked at previous mentions of the black bar on HN, and it seems that it is quite often subject to discussion.

Thus, should HN black bar become community driven?

33 comments

[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 68.1 ms ] thread
andy99
Benevolent dictatorship is always better than democracy for online forums.
sirobg
Better in what aspect?
stavros
Probably that it doesn't devolve into lowest common denominator rule.
vsnf
No, but it would be nice if the bar had some kind of tooltip associated with it denoting who it's for.
rossdavidh
One is reminded of the "flying flags at half mast" custom (in the U.S., at least), where it has happened more and more often over time. Should all flagpoles just be made twice as high, since some good person has died every day of the year? It's a hard problem. Fortunately, it is also a problem that doesn't really _have_ to be solved.

Letting @dang (or whoever it is) decide is not a perfect system, but it's probably as good as any other. Imagine if either Biden or Trump died, the storm that would ensue if one side wants the black bar and the other is outraged at the idea.

wand3r
> Imagine if either Biden or Trump died

Please don't give me false hope like this

smeej
The first time I remember flags at half-mast was after the shootings at Columbine in 1998 (I was living in that area of CO back then). The second time I remember was three years later in 2001.

I thought back then that this only happened for community-shattering events. Everyone in that are of Colorado was affected. Everyone in the U.S. was affected.

These days I've basically given up on even being able to find out why any particular flag has been lowered, because more often than not, it's just an isolated flag. I wish places that did it routinely had some sort of additional code system. Like, if fire departments want to lower flags to recognize the deaths of firefighters, it would help if there was a small secondary flag or something to help distinguish, "Someone from our department has died," vs. "Someone at another department nearby has died," vs. "Lots of people at a department far away died." I appreciate the expression of solidarity with their fallen comrades in any case. It would just be nice to be able to know which kind it is, or if it's something else entirely.

5555624
Typically, the American flag flies at half-staff or at half-mast when the country or a state is in mourning. The president or a state governor (or D.C. Mayor) can order flags to fly at half-staff. In most cases, an American flag flying at half-staff marks one of three observances: - The death of a government official, military member, or emergency first responder - A national tragedy - Memorial Day or another national day of remembrance

Back in 1954, President Eisenhower issued a proclamation on the display of the flag, 19 FR 1235, 3 CFR. Whether everyone follows that is another matter.

smeej
I don't doubt that those are the official rules, but these days anybody with a flagpole apparently flies it at half mast whenever they're sad (or sometimes angry) about something. That's why it's gotten confusing.
lkdfjlkdfjlg
> It's a hard problem

Stop calling everything a hard problem. It's not a hard problem if it's irrelevant.

andsoitis
> should HN black bar become community driven?

How do envision it would work? How much effort do you think is it worth building out and maintaining such functionality?

sirobg
First, I just wanted to ask the community if it is something they'd like to have. I thought implementation could come later.

I'm not particularly attached to any outcome this debate might lead to.

That being said, I was thinking a feature similar to flagging might do. Meaning a karma threshold + whatever exists today to actually make a post flagged/dead (if it's manual, well, maybe an arbitrary count threshold would do).

000ooo000
No. Not everything, especially something this inconsequential, needs the input of a community. I actually can't think of a bigger waste of resources. A committee of elected folk to decide if someone's death warrants a 50PX bar being black?
stavros
No, I'm fine with ballparking this. It's not like the dead care either way.
Havoc
Honestly 90% of the time I have no idea who these people are
jader201
More like 99% for me. Really reinforces imposter syndrome.

Then again, most articles on HN do that anyway.

bavell
Yup. It's a big community and I'd assume a broad age range.
beeboobaa3
Yes, ever since dang explicitly refused to honor Terry Davis, the disturbed genius who authored TempleOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
beeboobaa3
Not sure why I'm being downvoted for this. There were threads asking for it, and Dang said he wasn't going to. Seems the threads have been deleted since.
deadbabe
It should just be algorithmic. If the front page has an article with the word “dies” and there is a persons name detected, and the article has a certain amount of comments, then show the black bar. Easy.
siva7
That would seem like an over-engineered solution to a niche problem. Let's be honest, most of the time only a small portion of users know and care who passed away.
anotherhue
No, I don't want to hear about moderator infighting or political point scoring.

We're in dang's house by choice.

hwbunny
Forget the black bar. Give love and respect to people while they are alive, not after. They can't do shit with your virtue signaling once they have passed away.
krapp
I used to argue this, but I just got downvoted and eventually mod-filtered, and now I no longer bother.

Hacker News wants the virtue signal, for whatever it's worth.

polotics
Online communities with reasonable debate are under attack by state actors, HN is no exception.

In this context, no matter how well meaning the proposal is, opening an avenue for acrimony here is not something we can afford.

politelemon
There should be no black bar. It creates pointless discussions and politics and arguing, and destroys the intention for which it was introduced.
hwbunny
A better thing would be a person of the week. So HN curates a list of bigdik people who achieved something and show one per week for 2-3 days.
krapp
Nothing on HN is community driven, why should the black bar be an exception?