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The issue is that some people (appear to be) submitting very preliminary, and arguably low quality work to arXiv to stake a claim to some area. Once that work is "out there", people who were making a more serious effort to do things more carefully are obligated to cite the original work, presumably as part of the related work/background/etc.

I can see how this would be maddening, particularly if you started before the flag-planting paper was even written.

Flag-planting is relevant because the practice of flag-planting (and other abuses of the pre-print) is what has prompted some of this over-reaction.

There is a lot to be fixed about reviewers, but I have no clue how to do that.