Brajeshwar explained it, but I'll add that sometimes we can just put the posts directly into the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), so they get a random placement on HN's front page. But we don't do that if they're more than about 2 days old. After that, we email the submitter a repost link. If they use the link, it will create a fresh submission and then we can put that one into the SCP.

The downside is that if we don't have an email address for the submitter, we can't email them a repost invite! Then I have to resort to off-topic pleadings. That's what you saw.