HN allows everyone with sufficient karma to vouch for dead comments (or flag comments), I suspect most of the comment-level moderation you see is crowdsourced to fellow commenters; a still-dead comment means most of those who see choose to keep it dead.
HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation (including bans); any unmoderated forum devolves into a cesspit; and it only takes a surprisingly few bad apples to ruin a community.
HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation (including bans); any unmoderated forum devolves into a cesspit; and it only takes a surprisingly few bad apples to ruin a community.