>And as a sidenote, why do people downvote a question rather than answer it? Some of us like answering questions and deadening a question removes that ability.

if its just [dead] (no [flagged]), as the case with tyromaniac, that's automated by the site (suspected spam/ai/bot/etc.).

the comment can be vouched for to lose the [dead] status by users with 500+ karma (i think? maybe 1000)

comments don't gain [dead] due to downvoting.

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fhdkweig a day ago | parent [-]

oh, so when https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html says:

>What does [dead] mean?

>The post was killed by software, user flags, or moderators.

"moderators" isn't referring to just anybody with a downvote capability? They mean just the website owners, e.g. dang, etc.?

	▲	john_strinlai a day ago \| parent [-]
		correct, moderators in that context is dang/tomhow, not just users with downvoting capabilities. user flags will always have [flagged], otherwise downvoting just makes the text gray