I hope this doesn't sound like 'sucking up' because it's certainly not intended to be that, but I have been continually impressed at how good a moderator dang is. And more than moderation, he also 'curates' the site well, often adding links to when the subject or even the same article has been discussed before, etc.
But moderation of a popular forum is a Sisyphean task, and worse, it seems that gravity increases over time in this form of the task, making rolling the ball up the hill increasingly hard and not just endless. That sounds bleak but I think the solution is that eventually all forums must be abandoned, however good they once were, and new places found. I expect this to happen with HN eventually too, even though it's had a pretty good run so far.
