Nothing is deleted from Hacker News unless the author deletes it themselves or asks us to. Everything else can be linked to. Hence my question.<p>If a post is marked [dead], only users with &#x27;showdead&#x27; turned on in their profile will see it, but that&#x27;s trivial to turn on, so anyone who wants to read such comments easily can. And of course users are free to vouch for [dead] comments, which in most cases promotes them back to normal status.<p>Since you&#x27;ve made many accounts on HN, presumably you know all this.