I didn't see the link come up myself, but my immediate thought isn't that people were discouraging playfulness; they were flagging seemingly inappropriate mater

I didn't see the link come up myself, but my immediate thought isn't that people were discouraging playfulness; they were flagging seemingly inappropriate material. If the article is about link baiting, say that in the title. "Read the article first" isn't a good defense. What if someone were to post something called "XXX Free Porn"? You don't want to be clicking that in the wrong company, even if it is just a joke title. At the same time, you don't want spam links to persist, so you flag it without reading the article. Anyway, if people miss out on a good article because it was poorly titled, it won't be the end of the world.