I don't think this allows you to see flagged comments. There is an elite group on HN which are allowed to flag comments and these really will be hidden from everyone.
It's not really an elite group since I'm in it :-P You can flag after you get enough points. I can't say I've ever seen flagged things disappear. They may be marked "[flagged][dead]" but the content is still there.
It seems if enough users flag it gets killed instantly.
If not enough voters flag it might still catch Dans attention and he might manually kill it.
If a comment is dead we (users with over 500 points I think) might still revive it if enough of us vouch for it.
I'm not sure if we can revive a comment after Dan has used the banhammer.
Also I can confirm that unlike what someone thinks we who flag and vouch are not an elite group.
After 500 you get downvote and I guess vouch as well. You don't have to apply it anything, at least I didn't have to with the accounts that had those privileges, and I don't know anyone important around here, I'm just a bored sw engineer currently located in Northern Europe.
It's even less ‘elite’ — I have < 500 points and see a ‘vouch’ link on dead comments. The FAQ doesn't state the exact threshold; I'd guess it's 100 (at most).
It's not just one person normally. Not only you can click "flag" and find that no change was made, you can also vouch for flagged posts to make them visible again.
It’s not an elite group. I used to believe as you do, to a lesser degree. But even if that were true, you aren’t meaningfully disadvantaged by not being able to flag things. It’s like a super-downvote. You don’t even have downvote at 0 karma to my knowledge. There are karma tiers for feature unlocks, but they are pretty low, like 31 or something for vouch? I know there’s a link on HN with this info.
The lack of negative interactivity for new and lower karma accounts is meant to be a kind of training wheels period, where if you get karma, you’ll implicitly learn what is acceptable at HN, and until you do, your ability to embody and enforce the ideals of HN is limited to positive or neutral actions of upvoting and posting.
