Okay, breaking my rule here: yes, I am wondering that as well. Here's my assumption: the mods straight-up banned this individual's previous accounts, but shadowbanned this one instead. But shadowbanning just kills your comments automatically; in recentish times, HN has added a "vouch" feature that lets you vouch for a comment and get it un-killed. So I imagine that's what happend, which seems like a weakness in the shadowbanning feature, though maybe it's good as well, I don't know. The right way to know is to email the HN mods via the "contact" link at the bottom.

They certainly didn't get unbanned! And btw I vaguely recall other accounts being silly around a similar derangement-point, so perhaps this is a serial troll, which is one of the few cases where we just ban accounts immediately.

The comment might have gotten unkilled because of a bug that I might have introduced yesterday. Looking into it now.

Edit: yep, it turns out I introduced a bug, with the dismaying but hilarious property that flagging a dead comment would revive it. We'll revert the change and try again later.

The heart is a complex place and the internet a good channel for its darker bits.

I wrote an extremely long comment here, but deleted it. I'd rather say this: like anyone who works in public, I am very open and vulnerable to criticism. When you work in public for a long time, there's a ton of reasons for people to decide that they hate you and have an axe to grind. Some of those things are things I still stand by, some of them are things that I agree that I was in the wrong. I am not a perfect person, and make mistakes like any other. It's up to you to see my actions, who I am, and decide for yourself.