Once the comment disappears it is too late, no? How can an invisible comment be seen in order to be vouched or upvoted? I typically overlook grayed out or invisible comments unless I intentionally go looking for them.
It is not too late, but you have to enable showdead to see flagged/dead/banned posts (note: banned posts also get the [dead] tag). Unfortunately that comes with seeing some actually despicable posts.
I'm not sure I'd recommend showdead, but there are sometimes reasoned or informative posts that get flagged due to hyperbolic statements. Probably worth trying it out just to be aware of how the sausage is made.
I would personally appreciate a setting alongside showdead that disables the greying out of posts. It makes it very hard to read them. I am more than capable of ignoring things that I don't want to read.
> There should be an anti-downvoting/flagging facility
Like upvoting and vouching?
To be honest, I don’t think that comments are the problem. The community mostly does a good job of policing itself, especially once a thread gets enough visibility*. The problem is all the threads that get killed before they reach the front page (this post is a case in point).
* Although I will admit there are glaring blindspots you could drive a Panamax tanker through (especially political ones on the boundary between ideologies).
