Dang, I'm confused, why was this article flagged? Is it that it's considered flamebait? I'm asking because the article is in my Medium publication and a lot of our stuff does end up getting posted here and so I want to be a good citizen. (Also, I've been an active HN member since 2007 and I think have been relatively constructive at contributing.) I'm not trying to debate you. So if you do have time to say a bit more, I would fold your feedback into the work we do.

(Or is it just that this was temporarily flagged and then got unflagged? Like I said, I'm interested but am having trouble following the details.)

The article was flagged because users flagged it. I don't know why they flagged it. Most likely it was a combination of things. Some probably don't like the topic for ideological reasons, others are probably reacting to how common these threads are (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), others are probably reacting to the flamewar aspect. Those are just guesses.

When someone told me about the article I looked at it, looked at the thread, and turned off the flags. We do that sometimes when there's interesting information in an article and it's capable of supporting a substantive discussion.

Helpful notifications are welcome. Rants like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26388171 make things worse.

Thank you. Nice key phrase you have there for future search. I didn't know to look for flagging or that you could email for reconsideration. I will use that knowledge judiciously, if at all.

the flamewar was started by the post being flagged, your post is patronising.

Feeding flamewar is not ok, regardless of the provocation.

It always feels like the other person started it anyhow (and that they did worse); that's the recipe for a downward spiral.