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Comment by papeda | Hacker News Reader

Just last week a Terry Jones obituary received hundreds of upvotes, and I'm not aware of any contributions he made to "computing, science, business, startups, etc.".

I'm not saying Terry Jones obituaries should have been wiped too. I'm saying there's a weird editorial double standard here.

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> and I'm not aware of any contributions he made to "computing, science, business, startups, etc."

The name of one of the most prolific programming languages in the world, Python, is because of Terry Jones. That was his contribution and why he was relevant.

So if I can produce evidence that a famous computer scientist likes Kobe, that's all it takes?

If there were a programming language called Kobe or Mamaba, sure.

That’s tenuous at best.

The reason it was “relevant” is simply because there’s more Monty Python fans on here than basketball fans. Which is fine if we’re talking purely about +votes but it doesn’t justify flagging a submission.

Agreed he was most likely upvoted for his comedy. But there is this from his wiki page: "Jones wrote books and presented television documentaries on medieval and ancient history. ... Jones' TV series also frequently challenged popular views of history."

So there's some contributions to history, depending on how you value it.

Exactly. It's totally subjective. My speculation is that the personality type that is drawn to moderating a public forum like this is low on the kind of self-awareness that could distinguish personal bias from the written rules of the community.

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