[dang]

If you see a [dead] comment that shouldn't be dead, you can vouch for it, which (when enough users do that) brings it back from the [dead]. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch. We added that feature years ago because banned accounts sometimes post good things.

If you see an account whose posts are nearly all [dead] - which means either they're banned or running afoul of our software somehow - and you don't think they deserve that fate, you can always email [e-mail] and ask us to take a look. I've actually been working on a ban review system that will allow us to catch cases where accounts have been making good posts and don't need to be banned anymore. Though in the Dostoevskian underworld of internet dynamics, I have seen several cases of banned accounts which, as soon as they noticed they weren't banned, immediately begin violating the site rules in the most garish way until we ban them...apparently indicating that they prefer that state.

Please make sure you're up on https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, though, because if an account has been breaking the site guidelines, you can spare yourself the trouble of emailing—we're just going to point that out as the reason why the account needs to remain banned.