The Hacker News stance of "users can flag posts, it's none of our doing" I bet is a complete fabrication, and it's conveniently used by the moderators to hide hot-button topics. Not saying that's necessarily bad, but I feel the moderation team could be a little more honest with their "censorship" process, instead of trying to convince us it's all an organic, user-driven process.
You can vouch these posts at your own risk; just make sure you toe the party line, or you'll have the privilege revoked.
Nobody can vouch the post right now because it is not [dead]. At this point, if one wants the flag to be removed, the only way is to email hn@ycombinator.com for them to remove it manually at their discretion.
> Because this post doesn't have an insignificant upvote count and has actual conversation happening in the comments.
This isn't really relevant to the post being [flagged]. That happens when enough people click "flag" on the post. It will go to [flagged][dead] first, then people can vouch and it will drop them both, then, if more people flag it, it will become [flagged] again. It might be more complicated than that but I've seen that pattern a fair amount and I'm pretty sure the only way for a post to be [flagged] is for it to be, well, flagged.