Ask HN: Does HN have admin side?

How do you manage inappropriate posts? Is it only by down votes or?

From the FAQ "Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, and moderator intervention."

Users with karma over 200 (I think) have a 'flag' link. If multiple users click it then a submittion or comment goes [dead]. In your user profile you can opt-in to see those, the default is to hide them. I flag a couple per day, usually SEO spam ("lock smith in city X"), gambling sides and other promotions and the occassional story that doesn't belong, let's say "Famous footballer has an affair".

The moderators, that's two people afaik, have their own self-build tools and more visibility. Well, they have access to the servers and databases. They can ban users permanently, change algorithms, merge stories, change titles and such. Nobody else is moderator.

Thanks, I assumed about about "flagging" but was always wondering about some other less frequent features, as merge etc. and how they decide who has advantage of getting all the karma... Even if it is only 2 moderators it looks a quite significant task considering amount of posts.

I imagine it works similarly to Lobsters[0] which is basically a HN clone...

[0] https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters

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