&gt; <i>It&#x27;s nothing to do with admins - it&#x27;s ordinary users flagging items as not being appropriate for HN. They might even be interesting, it&#x27;s just that some things are not on-topic.</i><p>Not entirely correct. [dead] is banned by some filter set up by the mods, user flags only lead to [flagged]&#x2F;[dupe] markings on the individual submission (and attention of the mods, which then adjust the filters for future submissions based on this input)<p>EDIT: This also goes the other way, I&#x27;ve sent dang links to things I thought were unfairly [dead] and where he agreed he fixed it&#x2F;invited users to resubmit content to give it another chance. I guess now that vouch exists they look at that as well.