I don't know what tale that tells, and would need more statistics over a longer period of time to discern anything from it, while also taking into account many other factors. The Flag Wars have seemingly been contained to just a handful of people being involved and flagged. I don't know if it would affect the whole system negatively or positively in terms of numbers of users, as some people find the Flag Wars entertaining to a certain extent, many people aren't aware of it (or think it is related to the experiment), and it seems to be generally only a few people getting flagged, but recently it has escalated.