That's right—some users vouched for those 3 after we'd killed them.
That makes sense, because if you look at individual posts in isolation you might think they were unfairly killed. One needs to look at the posting history of the account as a whole to understand what the issue was.
(Btw, thanks for explaining the context in those other threads.)
I've had repeated comment and email exchanges with you over the years over whether or not an explicit "killed" or "dead" indicator on accounts and their posts/comments should exist. I understand the reasons against this, and arguably they'd be more relevant in the case of detected bot accounts (the indicator would be yet more training data, assuming feedback training).
I've also been experimenting with my own indicators for specific accounts based on my own criteria and interactions which I've found useful (applied through my own HN tweaks). E.g., if I see an explicit mod note that an account has been banned, I can mark it as such myself, sparing confusion.
How HN can implement a Voight-Kampff test becomes an increasingly relevant question.... One of several HN needs to consider with increasing urgency.
more important than an indicator it would probably be useful to somehow disable vouching for a killed account. i don't know if it is possible to set the flag counter to some high number so that vouching simply has no effect or to an invalid number like -1
two actually: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46988519