I'm curious why this was flagged. If the discussion yesterday didn't break HN rules, I'm not sure why the response would. I suppose both of them technically fall into "off-topic" discussion though.
Possibly some readers are tired of the repetition, and they're not wrong [1] - that's why we downweight follow-up stories [2]. However, we make exceptions when there's significant new information (SNI) [3], which basically amounts to: is there enough of a diff from the previous thread to support a substantially new discussion? Diffs are what's interesting [4].
In this case you could call it either way: the fact that Felleisen apologized is significant new information but on the other hand the thread is...of the second freshness. I've turned off the flags for now.
Flags are from users. So to some extent it's random personal opinion and unless you identified all individuals who flagged it and asked them why?, you aren't going to actually know, though it is fairly common for someone to give their opinion about why they think it was likely flagged (and sometimes I appreciate their observations and sometimes I'm kind of like "That's just your opinion, man!").
My finger was hovering over the flag button for a while. I was following the discussion and for the first hour or so the comments were of ridiculously low quality. I think of the first 20 comments less than 5 had positive score. I was thinking of flagging it because I just didn't see how any good discussion could form on it. I didn't flag because it seemed like the post itself had relevance.
It's rare for me to flag something. I usually try to leave a good faith comment if it seems worth discussing and the initial comments are sucky.
I'm not saying that's some kind of "right" way to handle it. That's just how I behave -- or try to behave -- and there are myriad factors that influence those choices. I'm just talking here.
In this case you could call it either way: the fact that Felleisen apologized is significant new information but on the other hand the thread is...of the second freshness. I've turned off the flags for now.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...