They seem to hang around rather long, at least in the order of 24 hours. Could posts that receive enough flags become hidden from everyone automatically until a mod takes a look? Maybe add some heuristic where flags from brand new users aren't counted towards this system to work against sockpuppet gaming.
That would work, but a karma threshold would work just as well (for the problem at hand at least), and be easier to implement.
I'm mean most of us would like a friendly bot to chat with, but this is just paperclipping the section (no offence clippy), by now its starting to be a real trivial inconvenience for me and it reduces my desire to check out new topics.