Those stories are barely more than gossip and belong on mainstream news sites. It doesn't look like they were generating much of interest in the comments either, just the usual go-my-team rhetoric and unfocused outrage in a random direction.

I guess we will never know how the conversation could have developed since the stories were killed prematurely.

Do you think the comments section of other types of HN stories are held to the same standard? Or do you think the promptness with which these stories are flagged has something to do with their subject matter?

I flag stories if I believe the odds of the resulting conversation being productive are sufficiently low. Obviously this is more common for some subjects than others; how could it be otherwise?

I understand that strategy. But I would encourage you to instead keep an open mind. You might be surprised at the value you can get from an unexpected direction.

If you have a number of people acting in the way you describe, you end up with an echo chamber, which is what the article is noting.