[tomxor]

I do find it worrying how people here use flagging for anything that is controversial or where the community is highly divided, flagging is not for downvoting... these things need to be discussed not marked as irrelevant or inappropriate.

[enriquto]

> these things need to be discussed not marked as irrelevant or inappropriate.

To be fair, "these things" are being discussed here every day, with lots of comments and no intent of suppression. Maybe some users are tired of seeing the same subject appear many times per day with no actual news, and they are flagging it as a form of protest. It would be still an inappropriate usage of flagging, but somewhat understandable.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

Flagging has been used for disagreement for a long time. Unfortunately, it seems that the number of controversial topics is steadily increasing so I wonder if flagging is still the optimal mechanism to handle it.