Not a bad gambit actually -- I'll sometimes turn on my air conditioner to drown out the sound of my neighbour's music.

The analogy only works if, like me, you consider Erlang articles to be a sort of white noise that you hardly notice, and the-programmer-formerly-known-as-_why articles as being slightly annoying.

It appears to be working, too.

It's kind of dumb since all it takes to get the _why stuff off the front page is for people to upvote other submissions that are arguably more relevant (and current).

Front page is a positive feedback loop. People upvote the stories they see.

and flag the _why stuff

Which I started doing when it got out of control, but I'm apparently in the minority. I don't really care one way or the other, I just don't read what I'm not interested in.

. . . if, by "working", you mean "replacing one form of noise with another, much louder form that will probably outlast the likely lifespan of the original form".