[hombre_fatal]

HN is a straight forward forum. Reddit is one level above that: generalized forums as a service.

Anything HN has had to implement, Reddit has to implement at a generalized, user-facing level, like mod tools.

Frankly, we underestimate how hard forums are, even simple ones. I learned this the hard way rebuilding a popular vBulletin forum into a bespoke forum system.

Every feature people expect from a forum turns into a fractal of smaller moving parts, consideration, and infinite polish. Letting users create and manage forums is an explosion of even more things that used to be simple private /admin tools.

[systemvoltage]

Mod tools are not accessed and used by all users. So the load of mod-tools on the servers is probably negligible.

I agree, most software is deceivingly simple from the outside. Once you start building it, you become more humble about the effort required to build anything moderately complex.

[vel0city]

Mod tools aren't used by the majority of users, correct. But the existence of mod tools does make the logic and assumptions of the application different. Now you've got a whole set of permissions and permissions checks, additional interfaces, more schema, etc.

Its not that the mod tools are constantly being used, its that there's now potentially far more code complexity for those tools to even exist.