[ilikepi]

Er...FYI, your [2] link is to a discussion about an article written by the person to whom you are responding.

Personally, I think the reason this post about gem.coop has been flagged is that we've reached the point at which new HN threads about things related to the recent RubyGems shake-up quickly devolve into people rehashing the DHH "aspect" of it all. So it has become less about flagging the actual target of the post and more about flagging the parts of the discussion that seem to go nowhere.

EDIT: expanded

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

That's fair enough, I didn't actually notice. Regardless, I was offering the information for other readers, which may or may not include the person I'm replying to.

Edit:

> flagging the parts of the discussion that seem to go nowhere

This is and isn't what actually happens, though. People do flag the parts of the discussion that don't go anywhere but then people also flag the post itself because they think there's no reason to discuss it at all for the fact there's a vocal part (minority or majority doesn't really matter) that wants to discuss a topic that's not going anywhere.

People shouldn't flag the post itself just because it's likely to gather or even has gathered a crowd that will discuss such directionless topics when there are better topics to discuss, even (especially?) if they're not currently being discussed.