I don't flag topics just because I can't provide meaningful resources to it. Do you?
Flagging may prevent others who might have those resources from contributing, yes? So flagging is not a neutral personal expression but a public negative expression, yes?
I still believe the interesting question is why did a big enough population decided this was not on topic enough to flag it, rather than ignore it.
Well, I'm drifting way into the sea of armchair psychology here, but a part of "I don't have resources to care" also translates often to "I don't want to see anything related to this."
Especially on the web, which tends to be fast-paced system 1 / reptile-brain media for many. Scroll, click, skim read, back, (not interesting topic - flag), f5, repeat.
There's an option to hide stories - it also hides comments for those stories on the new comments page. That's the appropriate action to take for stories one simply doesn't want to see, if one cannot muster the intestinal fortitude to simply ignore them and move on.
I'm not intending to be aggressive towards you personally, but Hacker News as a community because I consider flagging abuse to be really toxic behavior, particularly when a better alternative to it exists.
Flagging may prevent others who might have those resources from contributing, yes? So flagging is not a neutral personal expression but a public negative expression, yes?
I still believe the interesting question is why did a big enough population decided this was not on topic enough to flag it, rather than ignore it.