I am absolutely certain than they are. Some have even admitted it in discussions - they use it to mark articles that they think aren't quite right for HN or are likely to result in worthless discussion. Tptacek explained that that was why he flagged posts.
I am of the camp that flagging should only be used to mark "this is really inappropriate/terrible content that should be taken off the site immediately", not "this doesn't fit my opinion of what should belong on HN".
Flags are basically super-powered downvotes. A couple of flags can demolish the ranking of a post with 40 upvotes in 40 minutes.
If you're gonna allow that, might as well just have downvotes and be transparent.
Transparency would be nice. If tptacek downvoted/flagged anything I submitted, yet others loved them, I might wait until he was offline until I posted something. (apologies for using him as an example!)
I flag things where I can't imagine anything but pointless bickering going on. If I want to comment, and what I want to say sounds to me like "you asshat!" then I do a double-check to make sure the content belongs here. If I click through to comments and the thread is basically full of people saying "I believe X, and those that don't are obviously asshats" then I know it needs a flag.
Flagging isn't that I don't like it. It's that it hurts the site. I've flagged highly emotional pieces I agreed with. To me it's the effect on the site that should trigger a flag, not whether I like it or not. I already have voting for that.
See, that I would leave to the moderators, and to the flame war detector, rather than applying my personal opinion of "I don't like this discussion" and thereby downvoting a story by 10 points.
I am of the camp that flagging should only be used to mark "this is really inappropriate/terrible content that should be taken off the site immediately", not "this doesn't fit my opinion of what should belong on HN".
Flags are basically super-powered downvotes. A couple of flags can demolish the ranking of a post with 40 upvotes in 40 minutes.
If you're gonna allow that, might as well just have downvotes and be transparent.