I would love to see dang weigh in here just out of curiosity AND see how many people or if people are using the vouch mechanism if they can. Because this post doesn't have an insignificant upvote count and has actual conversation happening in the comments.
Don't use the vouch mechanism, it's a trap. I've had it disabled on my other account because I vouched "flame-bait" and thus I was revoked of the privileges, as dang explained to me via email, and I quote: "we took vouching privileges away from your account because you vouched for too many comments that were unsubstantive and/or flamebait and/or otherwise broke the site guidelines"
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.
> if people are using the vouch mechanism if they can
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.
