[_pius]

It doesn't.

Sure it does, if enough people upvote it.

I flagged it.

Great. Flagging and ignoring is the right way to deal with a story you don't think belongs. Fueling a meta-debate about the so-called poisonous story probably isn't.

... threads like this one are poison for HN.

Care to elaborate? I think the meta-commentary about whether something belongs on the front page is far less germane. Just watch as this comment thread devolves into a pointless back-and-forth about the guidelines.

[hoop]

According to posting guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.