If you wouldn't mind sharing, could you please elaborate on your reasoning for flagging them? I'd like some further insight into which elements of the coverage of the story (rather than the story itself) you find objectionable.

While I'm not flagging anything (I didn't even realize there was anything going on until about 10 minutes ago), I can see how people wouldn't want to hear about all this drama on HN. Regardless of where the incident started, HN isn't really the place for this. Can't we just get back to talking about X's new API and leave the gossip to twitter?

It seems like if you didn't want to discuss it on HN the easiest way would be to just let one story sit on the page where others who do want to discuss it can do so and ignore that one story. If people are flagging these because they don't want to see it discussed on HN they're just making the problem worse and ensuring that it's an even bigger story since it adds another layer of controversy.

The articles are intensely, but shallowly, interesting.

They're exactly the kind of thing that is a bad fit for HN. No one is going to change their mind after reading the posts. And, after the fifth thread, everything that has been said has been said and there's nothing new.

The post I replied to suggested 2 options - a flagging ring or official moderator action. There is a 3rd option: enough people think the articles fucking suck and are independently flagging that the articles are dropping position.

While I completely disagree with your action in flagging them, you don't deserve to be downvoted for admitting to doing so.

Without a shred of reasoning, it's a poor comment.

What? Why? Why would you abuse the feature like that?

Is that an abuse of the feature? I seem to recall that after enough upvotes, flags don't really have an effect. DanBC alone isn't going to bury anything that enough HNers want to see.