Are there some features I could add that would make YC News itself do what you need in this respect?

Looks awesome! My favorite are,

Writewith: Google docs is a great application. But it is very limiting when it comes to collaboration. I have recently setup an article with an editor and 6 contributing authors; I know the collaboration on Google docs for such a project is going to be hell.

Octopart: I love vertical search engines since they have the potential to compete with mainstream search engines. Moreover, as an engineer and electronics enthusiast, I've always had trouble locating components, so Octopart will certainly come in handy. In fact, I am going to go ahead and recommend it to my EE friends.

Auctomatic: I am not a power user on eBay, but from the sound of it, this startup really has something going for them. There is a definite need for streamlining the process of listing on eBay. The downside is that their exit strategy is limited to eBay and perhaps a few other smaller companies.

We're actively trying to avoid the nastiness that seems to take over so many online discussions. That's why there are fewer down-arrows here, for example. I suspect that down arrows are more often clicked on stupidly than up arrows, that if you don't have down arrows you give people fewer ways to inject stupidity into the system.

I'll probably never get around to supporting bold text in comments either, for the same reason.

To some extent news.yc is protected by being about a topic only a small number of comparatively smart people care about. With any luck we'll never have the full-blown trolls you find on general news sites. I have some ideas for solutions if trolls do start to appear.

It's not only me who kills them. There are a bunch of people (mostly founders of startups we've funded) who have editor auth. 90% of dupes and spams are dead before I see them.

Editors can also fix typos and replace linkjacks with the url of the original article.

wc -l

We know these guys pretty well and we like them. They understand hackers better than most VCs.