This article was submitted earlier [0] but flagged and dead without a single comment disagreeing with its contents. I vouched for it and it was dead again before I managed to comment.
- Anonymous voting does not work. People who have a belief that is not defensible (they are in fact often unable to articulate it) can use anonymous voting to shape (silence) discourse.
- Discussion should be allowed to continue for dead posts, there's no valid reason to block it.
- I don't know the exact mechanism of flagging and vouching but if reputable users vouch for a post, it should not be allowed to be automatically flagged again. It is clearly a contentious topic but there is clearly an attempt to suppress it.
I'll give the flaggers the benefit of the doubt and say that the article has a lot of assertions but little substance backing them up. I've seen comments (indeed on some of the flagged articles) with more substance than this article. Let's see some facts backing up these assertions (or articles with such) because I agree, this is super important.
This submission should not be flagged. There are worse articles on HN, constantly. Cowardice and obsequiousness are poor looks. Remember what Buffett said about reputations taking 20 years to build and 5 minutes to destroy
- Anonymous voting does not work. People who have a belief that is not defensible (they are in fact often unable to articulate it) can use anonymous voting to shape (silence) discourse.
- Discussion should be allowed to continue for dead posts, there's no valid reason to block it.
- I don't know the exact mechanism of flagging and vouching but if reputable users vouch for a post, it should not be allowed to be automatically flagged again. It is clearly a contentious topic but there is clearly an attempt to suppress it.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42956473