https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37852784
I see that the post is not flagged anymore, but it was for a couple of days after it was submitted and the damage is already done as far as visibility goes.
It got the regular amount of visibily and then was hit with meconium accounts doing wall of text dumps about nazis and kill, kill, kill, etc - leading to the flagging.
The topic itself was discussed in multiple threads, so there was no undue lack of coverage given it's all related to a very topical, political, non tech, tangental to HN subject.
So, it was okay to flag it because some users were writing unreasonably vile comments? If this tactic works, then it would be a good way to get something flagged.
It's especially OK to flag things that are off-topic as per the guidelines:
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
as opposed to:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
If it was organic and from regular users, I would agree with you. However, I don't think it is, considering how targeted the flagging is.
If you don't agree with me, then at least consider the possibility. Wouldn't you want to make it harder for people to do that?
A number of flagged posts are vouched for, leading to posts being unflagged - such as the linked post which is no longer flagged.
You appear to be arguing that the ocean should be wetter.
What you are describing obviously doesn't work.
HN is not the whole internet. If you have strong feelings about the current NCAA football rankings, or stupid policies of NYC's Dept. of Homeless Services, or the horrible ethical issues raised by Scorsese's new movie Killers of the Flower Moon - there are a zillion other sites where you can raise and discuss those.
And if the managers or users on those other sites are quick to flag and ban posts about the relative merits of MySQL vs. PostgreSQL, or awesome CSS tricks - that's okay, too.