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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Nothing was deleted. We never delete a comment, except when the author asks us to.

As hayst4ck pointed out, your parent comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39676467 was flagged by users. When enough users flag a comment, it gets killed—but not deleted. Anyone with 'showdead' turned on in their profile can see all the killed comments.

We can only guess why users flag things, but most likely it's because you're posting dramatic off-topic claims that experienced HN readers find tedious, because they've seen so many and know there's no substance to them.

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> Nothing was deleted. We never delete a comment, except when the author asks us to.

I have confirmed that the text of the comment has been replaced by [flagged] and is no longer readable. It's just sophistry to say that the text was only deleted and the comment was not deleted.

I'm sure plenty of users will be happy to confirm to you that they can still read your comment and that it is therefore not deleted.

I wonder if you're using a third-party app to read HN, because if you're using a web browser, you should not be seeing just [flagged]. I unkilled your comment when I posted my last reply.

When I logged out, last time it was replaced by flagged on Chrome and I couldn't read the text, but now I can, even though it's still flagged. Now there is a strange thing. Why are the other flagged comments still replaced with flagged? Your moderation is too variable.

> I unkilled your comment when I posted my last reply.

This?

When a comment gets a certain number of flags, the [flagged] marker appears on the comment. When it gets an additional number of flags, the comment becomes killed and the [dead] marker also appears.

If a reader does not have 'showdead' turned on in their profile, or is logged out, then the text of [dead] comments is not displayed. Instead it will show as either [flagged] or [dead]. This is what happened with your comment when it was in the [flagged][dead] state. Had you viewed it with 'showdead' turned on in your profile, you would have seen that the comment was still readable and not deleted.

Once I unkilled it, it went back from [flagged][dead] to just [flagged], and it went back to being visible to everyone whether they are logged in or not, or have 'showdead' turned on or not.

If you're logged in and seeing some comments that just say [flagged] instead of text, this is because you haven't yet turned on 'showdead' in your profile.

> Once I unkilled it, it went back from [flagged][dead] to just [flagged], and it went back to being visible to everyone whether they are logged in or not, or have 'showdead' turned on or not.

In other words, you resurrected the deleted text. I just hope this conversation will not be deleted/flagged again and become unreadable.

I don't want to argue definitions. If you prefer to call a comment 'deleted' which anyone with 'showdead' turned on in their profile can read, that's fine. On HN, we've always used the word 'dead' for that class of comments.

I don't want to argue about what to call it. I just confirmed the fact that the text that was deleted and made unreadable is back to readable. Still, I'm surprised that comments are sometimes hidden from even being present here.

Wrong, your original comment is still viewable with showdead on. Dang is not trying to mislead you here, it seems you just legitimately aren't very familiar with this site.

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