Thanks for your detailed response. I have a development background - mostly scripting on mainframe systems, but no web development experience. The HN format seems so clean and simple I figured there would be a lot of support for it somewhere even if it is not written in ARC in the same way that Digg has a bunch of open source options for someone who wants to 'clone' the site. Yes site administration would be a big consideration for me too - Is HN as simple on the backend for the admin as it is for users on the front end. If developing and deploying the site turns out to be out of my depth I would gladly outsource it to someone else but knowing where to start in terms of what open source options are out there that are currently closest to the goal of what I want to achieve comes first. The PHP bbs wont work for me. So, still looking...
Getting a HN clone up and running isn't too bad, and the version of news.arc available is very stable as is. Also, the folk in this forum are very friendly and willing to answer questions. I don't think that getting your HN clone up and running would be much more difficult than any other forum.
Tip: if you are looking to customize news.arc, I would start by working it out of the table formatting and into CSS. If not, it's a pretty rigid beast. It's worth the effort, and would also be a good way to get familiar with the code.
