zlacker

On the topic of flamewars causing removal of articles, the difficulty, IMO, is that an entry on HN is composed of both an article and comments. Flamewars have terrible comment quality, so even if the article is upvote-worthy, it can mean the spot on HN is better occupied by something with a less interesting story but better comments.

As to flagging, I think a bigger problem is activism-upvoting, in other words upvoting so others see a story and not because it's interesting.

If you don't trust the average user with flagging powers because of how they affect the front page, why do you trust them to upvote good articles onto the front page? Clearly only select users should be able to upvote articles.