It turns out that the combination of many-votes + flagged and killed is a strong value signal: Things That People Want To Talk About That Other People Don't Want Them To Talk About. I sincerely appreciate that HN does not entirely disappear them.
It's disappointing though that hckrnews.com has started to obscure those headlines, so you have to click through to decide if they are worthy of more attention. That's a backward step.
This way people can comment on controversial posts without the discussions seeping into the rest of the site.
Maybe dang will support this idea. He could even forego moderating it. :) It could be like a PvP wilderness section of HN...