Flagging isn't a "this person broke the rules" thing so much as a "this post is inappropriate or harmful to the site" thing. "Meta" discussion tends to get fla

Flagging isn't a "this person broke the rules" thing so much as a "this post is inappropriate or harmful to the site" thing. "Meta" discussion tends to get flagged heavily, because a lot of people feel like, "I'm here for interesting discussion about hacking and entrepreneurship, not to watch Hacker News stare at its own navel." It's basically off-topic. Posts about individual HN posters also seem to get a lot of flags, as many people find it kind of creepy and/or invasive.