This is a buried* thread on a Discussion page; the top comment is now down from the cited 10 or 15 upvotes to just +7 (and my first critical comment is currently at +6); and no one comes to a page on a lukeprog video because they want to weigh in on the burning issue of using 'the'. The people discussing are not a random subset of the community, even if one wanted to argue that the votes were in favor, so there's that too.

If this were written up as say a front page Article, I have no idea what the overall reaction would be, because there are all those other factors destroying our ability to extrapolate from this little flamewar to LW in general.

* I take that back, it was buried but apparently my comments have gotten enough upvotes to be unhidden again.