This post was killed by user flags. I've unkilled it so as to reply.

The comment in question was killed by the software after getting massively downvoted (I think the threshold was -10 at the time.) This software change is part of an experiment we're running. We haven't decided yet what to do with it.

This is sorta off topic, but I noticed that older posts which are dead now occasionally say they are [flagkilled].

What's the difference between those posts and this kind of post?

[flagkilled] means killed by HN users, as opposed to by the software or by moderators. Moderators basically never kill comments though (except spam).

Displaying [flagkilled] is another experiment we've been running. That one seems pretty likely to stick. The votekill experiment seems harder to call.

In my opinion, allowing HN readers to make comments disappear just because they disagree with them is a bad idea. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It'll end up offending and driving away people with interesting ideas. What'll be left is a concentrated core of people who are hostile to differing ideas and, effectively, learning.

The word innovation has been rendered essentially meaningless, but that's what's at stake: the most innovative ideas (the baby) along with the most asinine (the bathwater).

Comments should only disappear if they don't contribute to discourse (e.g. spammy, violent, etc.)

> It'll end up offending and driving away people with interesting ideas.

So it hasn't happened yet, in the 7+ years the site has been running? When will it happen then?

If by "making comments disappear" the GP means the fading out of downvoted comments, that's unlikely to go away for the reason you mention. But if instead the GP means the switching of massively downvoted comments to [dead] status (so only users with "showdead" set to "yes" in their profiles would see them), that's an experiment we were running, which I described above. I doubt we'll keep it.

Oh, okay. I think the GP meant the latter and I misinterpreted him or overlooked the distinction. In my mind getting massively faded out makes you about just as disappeared as being [dead]. At least from the perspective of reading the thread, it's approximately the same thing, and I thought . But considering the perspective of writing a comment, though: I've gotten a lot angrier when a comment (on Reddit) was deleted than when some HN comment was faded away. This is the second time I've seen downvoting-to-[dead] affect some of the weirder people on HN in a way that seems to violate the principle of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAg7AmyG2Ys . There are some other threads in the past (the justin.tv suicide maybe) where I've seen simply unpopular worldviews get downvoted and it would have been a shame for them to be [dead].

I was referring to the experiment (switching to [dead] status). I don't think fading out is a big deal.

Here is the comment - I see it as an opinion not an attack:

"...Maybe this is cynical but I dislike stories like this. I’m glad he got back safely, but it sounds a bit Everest-y. Felix Baumgartner was an experienced jumper. Every time a corporate executive pulls the “throw money at something hard for mere mortals” card I cringe. Again, Everest. The number of rich businessmen who die because Mother Nature does not give a fuck about job titles is immense. ..."