edit Raganwald, your voice here is generally one of the better ones. I really don't get this hangup on DF posts. So I say the below with much respect.end edit

I mean, if the problem is thread noise, how does adding comments complaining about noise lessen the noise?

There's four ways to lessen noise and increase signal:

1) Not posting the junk links to predictable and uninsightful DF posts is the best.

2) Flagging till removal is a close second, and increases signal.

3) Writing a blog post full of the same kind of meta-comment noise that just shows up in the comments, then posting it here is a distant third.

4) Barring that complaining until it goes away works as a fourth.

I haven't flagged the last couple that made it to the front page because they were genuinely interesting or insightful. But I'm one of those that swears that I will flag any DF posts where Gruber weaves a fantastic tale of twisted circumstances where Apple should be the villain in that tale, but Gruber finds some ridiculous and transparent angle where he believes they come out smelling like roses.

Here's the relevant thread between us on this

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890855

It's not the triteness of Gruber's Apple fanboyism, it's the ever present front pagedness of these predictable bizarre posts of his and the subsequent completely predictable pages upon pages of comments pointing out that his post is predictable that I think lessens the value of HN and do not further the conversation.

According to the guidelines:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

These types of posts by Gruber fail this test. They aren't interesting and they don't gratify anybody's intellectual curiosity.

"What does Gruber think about this potentially bad thing about Apple?" always has a knowable answer. There is nothing to be curious about.

Another guideline

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

These Gruber fanboy posts serve no purpose but to spark a possible flamewar. Like I said above, they are predictable and the response is predictable. There's no reasoning over his posts.

Apple could fuel their next generation of mobile computing devices with the still beating hearts of Tibetan orphans and Gruber would find a way to spin that into some bold and brilliant strategy where Apple is helping pull Tibet into first world-dom by eliminating their orphan problem.

"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

This is the point where everybody here is basically going against this guideline. Flagging is the appropriate response and less complaining about yet another Gruber fanboy post is the best course.

In fairness saying you will flag them is a powerful signal to stop posting these things and stop wasting everybody's time and improve the signal-noise ratio.