Show HN post flagged or dead: what it means and what to do

On Hacker News, [flagged] means users flagged your post as breaking the guidelines or not belonging on the site. [dead] means it was killed by software, user flags or moderators, so it's hidden unless people turn on showdead. A dead post can come back if enough users vouch for it. Don't delete and repost it. If you have a question for the moderators, the guidelines say to email hn@ycombinator.com.

As of November 11, 2026, this comes from the Hacker News FAQ, the guidelines and the Show HN page, plus one 2015 Y Combinator blog post, all listed at the end.

What do the labels mean?

Label	What the FAQ says it means	What you can do
[flagged]	Users flagged the post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on HN. Moderators sometimes add it too, though not usually on submissions, and sometimes turn flags off when they're unfair.	Read the post against the Show HN rules. Flags also lower a post's rank.
[dead]	The post was killed by software, user flags or moderators. Dead posts aren't shown by default.	Other users can vouch for it. People with showdead turned on in their profile can still see it.
[deleted]	The author deleted the post, or asked HN to. These stay hidden even with showdead on.	Nothing to restore. Deletion is meant for things that shouldn't have been submitted.
Buried as a duplicate	A repost of a story that already had significant attention in the last year or so.	Point people to the earlier post instead.

The FAQ also says killed threads are closed to new comments, so a dead Show HN can't collect replies while it stays dead. The 2015 Y Combinator post adds that posts from a banned account go [dead] too, so if everything you post shows [dead], that's the question to ask the moderators.

Can a dead post come back?

Yes, through vouching. The FAQ says that if you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can click its timestamp to open its page and click "vouch" at the top. When enough users do this, the post is restored. There's a small karma threshold before the vouch link appears, and the FAQ doesn't give the number. The 2015 Y Combinator post that announced vouching suggested 30 karma at the time and called vouching an experiment, so treat that number as dated. The same post says moderators review vouched posts and take vouching rights away from people who abuse it.

Asking people to vouch is a gray area I'd stay out of. The FAQ says not to ask people to upvote or comment on a submission, and that HN penalizes or bans submissions, accounts and sites that do. Vouching isn't named there, but it's the same kind of request.

Can I email the moderators?

The guidelines say: please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something, send it to hn@ycombinator.com. None of the three pages describe an appeal process for a killed post, so I'd write one short, polite email: the post link, what you made, and a question about whether something in it broke the rules. Don't post an Ask HN about it.

Can I post it again?

Not by deleting and resubmitting. Both the FAQ and the guidelines say not to delete and repost the same story. The FAQ does allow a small number of reposts if a story hasn't had significant attention in the last year or so. Otherwise HN buries reposts as duplicates.

For a Show HN, a repost also has to be a real Show HN. The Show HN page says new features and upgrades like "Foo 1.3.1 is out" generally aren't substantive enough, while a major overhaul is probably OK.

What gets a Show HN flagged?

None of the pages give a list of flag reasons. These are the Show HN and general rules a post can break, which I'd check first:

• It can't be tried: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, landing pages and fundraisers aren't Show HNs.
• It isn't ready for users to try, or it puts a signup or email in the way, which the page asks you to avoid where you can.
• It's a quickly generated one-off. The page says the project should be non-trivial.
• You didn't work on it yourself, or you aren't around to discuss it.
• Friends were asked to upvote or comment.
• The post uses generated text, or your comments use generated or AI-edited text. The guidelines ask you not to post either.
• The title is dressed up with uppercase, exclamation points or praise.

I go through the qualifying rules in more detail in Show HN rules.

What the official pages don't say

A lot of advice about dead posts comes from forum threads, so here's what I couldn't find on HN's own pages as of today: the current karma needed to vouch or flag, how many vouches restore a post (the 2015 post says moderators also review vouched posts), any rule that kills posts from new accounts (the FAQ only says green usernames mark new accounts), or how the second-chance pool picks posts. The pool exists at news.ycombinator.com/pool, but the page has no explanation on it. I'd treat any specific number on those as a guess.

What I'd do

Check which label it has first, [flagged] or [dead], since they mean different things. Don't delete it. Read it against the Show HN list above, honestly, and fix what you can on the product side: let people try it without a signup and write the post yourself. If you still think it was a mistake, send one email to hn@ycombinator.com and leave it there. If you'd like a second read on whether your landing page makes it easy to try the product, I'll check it for free.