zlacker

I suspect it triggered the flame war detector. Search for that and you'll find more information.

It can be flagged without showing "[flagged]". That tag only gets shown when something is flagged to death. Your item wasn't flagged to death because it's still active.

I suspect it's mostly that a sizeable proportion of people on the site decided that it doesn't really fit with the theme and they don't want to see things like that, so they flagged it. That, associated with the large number of comments and comparatively few upvotes caused the "flame war" penalty to apply.

No conspiracies necessary, all explained by the regular dynamics.

>>ColinW+(OP)
Yes, it triggered the flamewar detector.

>>dang+w2
There's nothing wrong with energetic conversation as long as it remains civil, but I have to guess that your experience is that the incivility comes quicker in these cases though.

>>ratsma+k4
It might not only be incivility but also lower SNR (people replying to each other with the same rehashed arguments) which makes the whole thread less interesting for everyone, including passive readers

>>hiq+BN
That's also exactly right. Sometimes we call it the 'overheated discussion detector' for that reason—not every such low-SNR thread is a flamewar.

>>ratsma+k4
Yes, although the issue isn't only incivility, but also other forms of repetition. The intention is to avoid discussions that are predictable and otherwise low-information, to the extent possible.

You're quite right that energetic conversations can be really good, though, which means we have to review the list of threads that have gotten penalized by the flamewar detector and turn the penalty off for the ones that don't deserve it. We do that several times a day. It's not a perfect solution though, because sometimes a thread languishes for hours before we notice that that's happened.