[junke]

Thanks for replying. I was thinking about the "Make X Y Again" types of article that, intentionally or not, invites offtopic discussion.

The original comment from simonw (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23137531) originally did not have many comments but was already flagged when I saw it first, which was strange to me because the comment basically says "this is a bad title (it distracts from the content), don't do that". This is quite a reasonable comment to me.

So under that comment are many exchanges that may or may not be offtopic, but I was curious in particular about why that parent comment was flagged, and what recourse users have when something is flagged but maybe shouldn't (wasn't there a "vouch" action?). My opinion is that if the submission itself brings political subject into light, even indirectly, it is unfair to flag political comments as offtopic.

[dang]

A bunch of users flagged that comment. We can only guess why users flag things, but my guess is that in this case they thought it was a specimen of the very distraction it was worrying about.

[junke]

I agree that it's probably what they think. My opinion is that flagging is unecessary in that case since people can already downvote and hide distracting comments.

Thanks for your answers.