> It's marked as [flagged], so it was killed because some users flagged it.
That's just right. That post was killed because users flagged it, and it can be unkilled if other users feel it should be discussed on HN and vouch for it.
> But yes, things can get user-flag killed. And things can get system-flag killed. And we have no clue which happened.
You do: if a story is dead and says [flagged], it's because users flagged it enough to kill it. If you see such a story and think it deserves discussion on HN, you can vouch for it.
If a story isn't DOA because it was submitted from a banned site or user, then it won't turn up dead unless by user flags because moderators don't kill stories and neither does the software at that point.
Killing and flagging are two different things. Killed means the post is marked [dead], is closed to new comments, and is only visible to users with 'showdead' turned on in their profile. [Flagged] means a lot of users considered it off topic or against the site guidelines. (Moderators also sometimes put [flagged] on posts, but this is a tiny minority of cases, and was not the case with this one.)
When enough users flag a post, it becomes both [flagged] and [dead]. I unkilled your submission—that is, I took off the [dead] marker and reopened it to new comments. But I did not turn off [flagged], because I agree with the users who flagged it—it's not an intellectually interesting post, it's meta drama.
I get that you're angry that our software killed some of your submissions and that I used the word 'promotional' to describe them. I've explained to you in detail why that happened and what you can do instead so that it doesn't happen in the future. Trying to turn this into a scandal about HN moderation and "censorship" isn't going to work, not because moderators are suppressing you but because the community doesn't support what you're saying. Even though you don't accept the explanations I've given you, most HN users do, and actually appreciate the fact that we've built systems to try to protect HN for its intended spirit of intellectual curiosity.
Re your previous post getting lots of upvotes: you can't go by upvotes alone (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). Indignation and sensationalism, to pick two examples of qualities that aren't good for HN, routinely attract tons of upvotes. This is a flaw of the voting system and is why we need countervailing mechanisms—such as user flags, moderator action, and software filters—to try to preserve HN for its intended spirit. If we didn't have those mechanisms, the front page would be filled with nothing but indignation, sensationalism, and a handful of the same hot topics over and over. That would be an entirely different forum. You can call this "censorship" if you want (people mostly use that word as a generic pejorative). I would call it something more like an immune system. Either way, it's governed by principles which I've explained to you repeatedly.
HN hosts tons of discussion that is critical of "big tech and social news in our lives". Nobody is trying to suppress such discussion. The issue is (a) article quality, and particularly whether an article fits HN's mandate or not (that is, whether it is intellectually interesting and can support a substantive discussion), and (b) whether an account is using HN as intended (for intellectual curiosity, involving a diverse range of topics) or just using it to get attention for its own stuff (which is what I'm referring to as promotional).
If you want to do better on HN, you need to make sure that the articles you're posting are intellectually interesting (that means to the community, not just to you; everyone thinks their own articles are interesting); and you need to diversify your submissions so the software doesn't classify you as promotional. Perpetuating endless disputes about moderation is not either of those things and isn't helping you, neither with us nor with the community. The community is being a lot harder on you here than I am.
We added that recently, partly because people like transparency and partly because I got tired of typing "This post was killed by user flags."
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