[gruez]

>If you're on a knitting forum and people keep talking about fantasy football, they deserve to be flagged.

That doesn't seem to be what the parent poster is talking about? I take his comment as talking about certain opinions (on a given topic) being flagged, not random off-topic discussion getting flagged.

[SavantIdiot]

Ah good point: I guess I'm talking about "offtopic" vs what "flamebait". Hmmm... How about if I shoehorn my argument into that shape though: if the problem is constructing an echo chamber by downvoting differing opinions, is that OK? Can we have a board that is predominantly one set of opinions? Again, I'm not entirely sure that is a bad thing all the time. (Putting aside the opinions of sociopaths and other universal unsavories.)