> Who cares if it is a legitimate criticism and makes unique points in both cases?
Clearly, the people flagging it care, whether because they disagree with your assessment of it providing legitimate criticism and unique points in both cases, or because they think some other quality it has outweighs that in assessing it against the bar for belonging on HN.
> Some call it "inflammatory" but it has scientific and critical value nonetheless.
Value is subjective and people clearly disagree with you on this point.
If you find it does not have value to you, don't upvote it and ignore it. Don't flag it to try to hide it from people who it may have value for. It's clearly not spam, so it's not your job to determine whether it has value for other people.
Flagging posts that would not fit on HN or would just cause pointless flamewars is acceptable. Given the state of this thread, I think it's even more justified.
"Users [flag] post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on HN."
I've seen far more inflammatory commentary/criticism in the tech community over the years. This post is honestly pretty mild if you look at it objectively.
The fact that a small subset of the Go community is triggered by this post and can't behave in a civil manner isn't a reason to flag it.
> I've seen far more inflammatory commentary/criticism in the tech community over the years.
That it isn't the most inflammatory commentary (even if one agrees with that, which is, of course, subjective) in the tech community doesn't mean that people assess that it “gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” The latter, not the former, is the criteria for being on-topic at HN.
Naturally, people will disagree with what is within and outside of this boundary, and use flags or not accordingly.
Can we do without the finger pointing as well? I am not part of the Go community, and I would prefer not seeing any reaction posts and divisive opinion pieces on this forum, whatever the language or topic.
Honestly I just hope @dang nukes this thread from orbit, and maybe it'll be posted again and get a cooler reaction from everybody.
> I would prefer not seeing any reaction posts and divisive opinion pieces on this forum, whatever the language or topic.
Eh, unless there's evidence a submission is genuinely shitposting--i.e. trolling the community by being intentionally divisive while not actually believing what they're saying--or is outright offensive, I really don't agree.
Writing provocative critiques, like this, has been a standard in the tech world for as long as I can remember. If the rule is "don't post anything that runs the risk of upsetting someone", we'd have to ban half the leaders in the community, including Linus Torvalds.
Clearly, the people flagging it care, whether because they disagree with your assessment of it providing legitimate criticism and unique points in both cases, or because they think some other quality it has outweighs that in assessing it against the bar for belonging on HN.
> Some call it "inflammatory" but it has scientific and critical value nonetheless.
Value is subjective and people clearly disagree with you on this point.