I'm guessing the submitter is making a suggestion to deal with the _why/Zed Shaw articles.

Yes it's the old "fixing the signal to noise ratio by adding lots of noise" gambit.

Not a bad gambit actually -- I'll sometimes turn on my air conditioner to drown out the sound of my neighbour's music.

The analogy only works if, like me, you consider Erlang articles to be a sort of white noise that you hardly notice, and the-programmer-formerly-known-as-_why articles as being slightly annoying.

It appears to be working, too.

It's kind of dumb since all it takes to get the _why stuff off the front page is for people to upvote other submissions that are arguably more relevant (and current).

Front page is a positive feedback loop. People upvote the stories they see.

and flag the _why stuff

Which I started doing when it got out of control, but I'm apparently in the minority. I don't really care one way or the other, I just don't read what I'm not interested in.

. . . if, by "working", you mean "replacing one form of noise with another, much louder form that will probably outlast the likely lifespan of the original form".

I just hope that it doesn't become a weird meme, where submitting an Erlang article is the equivalent of expressing disapproval of the current trend in headlines.

"Oh no, people are submitting the same old Erlang articles, the current focus/glorybaiting must be getting annoying!"

To be honest, that would probably be one of the best weird memes I've run across.

...which is silly. There were maybe three _why-related articles left on the front page -- now half the articles are Erlang.

It's worse than that, now. I count 78% Erlang on the front page of Hacker News.