If you see a good comment in the [dead] state, you don't have to complain about it being "unfairly censored" - you can intervene to fix it by vouching for it. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

That requires the user to reach the "small karma threshold". Difficult when the user you replied to has negative karma after several months of HN participation.