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Ask HN: Why do threads die?

3 points by dbz ↗ HN
I'm wondering if anyone has an answer to my question. An example is currently on the news page:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1179711

I understand there are banned links, so those pages are automatically killed. However, I see this thread was killed without any reason- except for the author wrote the title and text without being very....proper?

Maybe we can start giving reasons (possibly) for closing threads?

4 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 22.6 ms ] thread
JacobAldridge
I imagine it was flagged multiple times, and tipped over the flag/vote weight. I'm personally in favour of this system on HN - it may be biased towards threads dying, but I would rather kill some good threads than have a bias that allows off-topic, link-bait etc rising to the top.

Of course, I have Show Dead on, so in effect dead threads are just an extra datapoint when I decide whether to read.

dbz
Maybe there should be an unflag option?
s-phi-nl
There is. After you flag something, the link that used to say "flag" changes to "unflag".
pg
Yes, that one was flagged to death.