It's a ridiculous overreaction to a handful of submissions about the disappearance of _why. That's all.

Considering the original "flush" was initiated to try to get non-hackers to stop coming here, I have to wonder if some of the people participating in this "flush" are trying to get Ruby hackers to stop coming here.

I prefer 5 _why articles in the top 30 to 15 erlang articles. If this is the case it is the Hacker News version of a flamewar and it really mars my enjoyment of the community.

It is interesting that flamewars through comments are quickly curbed since downvoting fades the comment out and sufficient flagging will kill troll(s) quickly. However, there is no way for the crowd to remove articles any longer after articles reach a certain threshold. The erlangers whether intentionally or not are exploiting this loophole.

[EDIT] 2nd <p> is a long-winded version of other comments on this submission :)

As someone who knows neither this underscore persona nor this erlang language, they're both unwanted noise.

Time to add a comment to the feature request thread for filtering.

stopping non-hackers from coming here fosters frustration, and decidedly deteriorates a community of hackers over a period of time, a "flush" seems to only be a reaction from some under appreciated ego's

It's a side effect of not allowing submissions to be downvoted. Flagging is possible but it's hidden enough for people not to bother as much.

Also, it's no longer possible (since a month or two ago) for articles above a certain score to be auto-deleted through flagging.