For those of us without flag powers, mentioning the adage is the most we can do about titles like these on HN. Of course I could just stop reading the HN front page, but that seems a rather null solution.
I've got flag powers, but I've basically given up. People have decided to upvote things that aren't relevant to this site, and by the time I see them, it's too late.
And reading the 'new' feed is even more discouraging. I can't deal with the constant flood of garbage that obviously wasn't interesting or relevant, just to find a few tiny morsels.
Don't give up! Flag, and comment (briefly) about why. It's been my experience that lots of storied that I believed were long past flaggable (80-90 upvotes) have been killed sometime after I flagged them.
Even if your flag doesn't kill the story, the conversation about why you flagged it will be valuable --- at the very least, more valuable than the off-topic story.
Well, you've got me there. I flag frequently, like maybe 5-10 a day on average but sometimes 20+. Maybe there's another karma threshold or something I don't know about.
