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Does HN do this for certain source that have been flagged too many times, or otherwise considered low-quality?

My impression is pg has banned some sources manually:

Huffingtonpost.com - for linkbait blogspam.

theonion.com and buzzfeed.com - off topic entertainment.

gawker.com and its other domains - general sleaziness.

pg might want to consider unbanning Buzzfeed, though. In the past year or two they've added tons of reporters who do pretty decent long form articles you would expect to see on Slate, The Atlantic, or Forbes, and the risk that HNers will upvote "The 50 Greatest Cat Photos of All Time" is probably pretty low.

You can hate Gawker all you want, but I find they consistently produce great prose that I enjoy reading and often find educational and valuable. Not all the time, but you can't write off the entire org just because of defamer. Sure it's snarky, I appreciate that sometimes though, especially when you're writing about something as pathetically retarded as the US govt. shutdown or Sean Parker's wedding and his ridiculous defences hence.

There are some domains that, should submit a URL for them, are auto-instantly marked [dead].

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