[sillysaurusx]

That’s not true. A story can disappear from the front page for a variety of reasons, including user flags and manual moderator intervention. There’s no reason to suspect this particular story triggered the flamewar detector.

[kayodelycaon]

The number of comments exceeds that number of votes. IIRC, that's one of the factors in the flamewar detector.

[sillysaurusx]

You’re right, but they didn’t at the time.