>> "I flag stories only if they're poorly-written and completely unrelated to tech"
Why the tech requirement? It's HackerNews not TechNews. There are plenty of good posts I've found useful which fit the hacker label but not the tech one.
If they are well-written but don't involve technology, they don't activate the flag criteria. I may even upvote them if there are cool enough (many New Yorker essays, for example).
If they are poorly-written but do involve technology, they don't activate the flag criteria. I simply won't upvote them.
If they are both, they are taking up link space.
(I'm also personally opposed to the "Let's use hack to describe everything!". That said, I do appreciate good writing--for example, the piece on Frank Lucas that showed up a while ago.)
It might help the discussion to provide an example of something really borderline rather than theoretical exploration.
"Bird Bath: The Conservation of a William Morris Textile"
I didn't click flag because I have a certain fondness for dead media preservation, someones going to be writing something very much like this in 50 years for preserving 5.25 floppy media, or flash drives, or a museum preserving its vintage iphone 5, which gives you something to think about. And, after all, its jacquard woven which means a lot to CS/IT/tech people who know what that means (which is probably not many). But its really darn close to the line and I would not feel its excessively outta line for someone else to click flag, if they want to.
Why the tech requirement? It's HackerNews not TechNews. There are plenty of good posts I've found useful which fit the hacker label but not the tech one.