[dang]

On HN, dupeness is more a question of whether the underlying story is substantively the same or not—or, to put it slightly differently, whether the follow-up submission is able to support a substantively different discussion or not.

In this case, the answers appear to be yes, it's substantively the same story, and no, it can't support a substantively different discussion than the previous major thread. That's why we'd treat the follow-up submission as a dupe.

This is in no way passing judgment about the importance of the story! It's just that if we weren't careful and proactive about moderating HN in this way, the frontpage would rapidly fill up with variations on the hottest stories of the moment, and avoiding repetition is a core principle here (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

I wrote a long explanation about exactly this the other day—if you (or anyone) is willing to take a look at that (assuming you have the stamina) and still have a question that isn't already answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815.

p.s. The current case is unfortunate because the follow-up/duplicate post came a week later than the original thread. If it were hours later, or a day or two later, as is more typical, we would merge the threads and in this way avoid a split discussion. But 7 days is too wide a chasm to merge across.

[mfkp]

I suppose it's just a bit frustrating that HN is one of the few places left on the internet where we can have a mostly civilized discussion about politics. I had missed the discussion from 7 days ago so this was news to me (and I'm sure most of the other commenters). If you miss the one chance to discuss that one topic, it can never be discussed again on HN.

I'm not opposed to this rule for moderation, and I understand the reasoning behind it. But it seems like we're just watching the country burn and when stories like this get suppressed to make room for a new rust package manager, it makes me all nihilistic.

/rant

[dredmorbius]

As one who shares your frustrations: working with the HN system, and pushing back where you feel it's appropriate, are both productive.

Dang (and earlier pg and sctb, and now I suspect tomhow) often express frustrations with the HN community's collective behaviour (a recent example: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43477305>). A key consideration is the fragility of the community and service itself (socially, not technically), as evidenced by, say, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23047709>, and even more revealingly here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22805993>.

Your argument is likely not with their beliefs or preferences, but the embodied practices of HN moderation. Which can themselves be problematic as they have a strong status quo bias, as I've pointed out repeatedly:

<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.

Which often manifests as tone policing, as again I've commented (some overlap with above search):

<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>

Consider reversing that bias a hacking challenge.

[tptacek]

For what it's worth: if it's one of the few places you can still have a civilized discussion about politics, that's at least in part because we don't talk about politics very often here. Every time we do, some of the civility of the site chips away. Since the whole premise of the site is to investigate how long we can stave off Eternal September, this seems an important consideration.

[dang]

> it can never be discussed again on HN

For sure it can, if and when significant new information arises. That's the main point of the principles outlined at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815.

But yes, I hear you and I know it's frustrating. There's no important topic that HN really does justice to.