True, but I think one point the article makes that I find interesting is that people need some avenue for discussion of meta topics. We're naturally driven to justify our actions (there's a good book called "why?" on the pervasiveness of this psychological need.) In the case of HN, we don't just want to flag articles, we want to explain why we think the article is on or off topic. Doing so gets you modded down, yet people seem compelled to do it anyway.

So perhaps some sort of meta-discussion mechanism (a separate page, or the ability to add a comment about why you flagged something, etc...) would be of value? OTOH, the level of discussion is better here than most sites, so perhaps we should leave well enough alone.