Dang is going to have 65,535 karma points soon

Congrats Dang, you have done a wonderful job so far and moderate one of the most fantastic online communities out there. I am sure most of the job feels somewhat thankless but I want to let you know I(and many many other users on this site) appreciate your hard work and dedication.

If by “finest” you mean a Reddit mob mentality for tech, then yes I completely agree with this statement.

What do you think we could do differently? Serious question.

I don't like the mob thing either but it's how large group dynamics on the internet work (by default). We try to mitigate it where we can but there's not a lot of knowledge about how to do that.

Reset karma for everyone. Your top karma people abuse their authority and you don't even notice. If a post is flagged, show who flagged it and for how long.

High karma users don't gain any special authority or privilege.

There are a few places in the code that consider karma but IIRC it's never more than 500 (the downvote threshold). It's actually on my list to add more goodies for higher levels - maybe something like linkifying URLs in user profiles - but it would not have anything to do with authority on HN itself. We want the best comments and the best arguments to 'win', not skew things in insiders' favor.

You haven't addressed publicizing who flagged a post. For instance, who flagged the first post on Bob Lee's death? How long was it kept flagged? Who removed the flag?

How would one know if flagging wasn't abused? I've had comments flagged that get unflagged a day later. Were there any consequences for the person who flagged the post?

Sorry I missed that point. We wouldn't publicize flags any more than what people upvoted or downvoted. That data is quite personal.

Trust is important in a community. Which this isn't!