Aren't submissions killed through flagging? It's the community that kills posts, rather than the moderators. I haven't looked at the code, but I think it's something that is automatic. Some clarification on that?

Preface: I love meta-conversation. It's like introspection and from introspection, there is growth...

I am with you. I thoroughly enjoyed the post. I like knowing that MJ was a very nice man and very genuine. He was an authentic person in a sea of frauds and bluffers -- a breath of fresh air.

Anyway, this is just a problem with community. Communities are just aggregates of the individuals. I lurked at HN for a long time before I decided to join in and try to add value. I like HN because the community here values truth above all. There was a desire to have open conversation and see all sides of an argument and really dig deep into a topic to figure out what is going on.

I think the MJ issue is one of those. It's an interesting story. A long life of hard work, sacrifice, a rollercoaster of a life. His is the kind of lesson we can learn from.

But the community here is very ... narrow minded I would say. It's young. It hasn't "Learned the hard way" so to speak. It's quick to adopt new technologies. It's slow to learn from the past. This community wants change. It wants something different. But Michael Jackson stories have quickly become "the same." This community wants to get away from that.

Anyway, I'm just rambling here. Flag me if you want, [dead] my comment. I'm just talking. I don't have an agenda, but it seems more often than not, agendas are being pushed here. Propaganda.

Some of the agendas around here: Open Source, No SQL, Anti-Microsoft, Anti-higher education, Programming language elitism, environmentalism, healthcare reform, pirating copyrighted material, and getting rich quick to name a few. Some are my agendas, some aren't, but anything contrary to these positions is ignored or flamed for community selection bias. There are people in the group who are not like that, of course. I appreciate lots of comments on both sides. Some of those things I mentioned above I dont like so much, but I tolerate them. Nothing is perfect right? Really my goal is to find truth, but it seems like truth is becoming less of an agenda around here. Logical and rational conversation is becoming [dead] as well.

As the community gets larger, it's going to approach "main stream." And there is a mainstream even among programmers, the l33t ones. I feel like I'm talking to myself 10 years ago. I thought I knew a lot more than I did. I'm not wise by any measure, but I see myself in hacker news, so I can reflect on it with some hindsight, because it is a lot more like myself 10 years ago when I was ... more naive, more optimistic. I didn't know that change isn't always good back then. I was invincible. I could fix the world. I can still fix the world though. :)

Anyway, none of this matters. I'm just occupying brain waves while I am in transition, so I come here to entertain myself. Perhaps that is the crux of it. Hacker News is about entertainment -- entertainment of a "different" sort and that's why pop entertainment is flagged. Michael Jackson is part of that.

I have noticed over time, that to have constructive conversation, you must first agree, then explore. That happened a lot here. "Yes, that's possible, let's see.. let's think about that a little bit." But less thinking is happening and more "regurgitation" is the norm. It's normal I suppose. The only solution, if you find that what you are looking for is starting to "go away" is to start another community or find a new one.

Ask yourself, "From what did this community start?" That nerve is the focus from which dendrites sprout and axons connect and so I'll get off my soap box after I say, I still love hacker news. I think it's still the best aggregator out there. It's a pretty smart community. It humbles me all the time and that's what we need in life is a little humility. I wander around in the "real" world and I feel too smart for my own good. I come here and I feel dumb and it's awesome. It's good to know that there are people like this community out there.

EDIT: Wow... this topic was on the front page, then dead, then on #2. It is an example of itself.